A tornado destroyed their city. Now Moss Point picks up the pieces and waits on Biden.

The sight of new ruins shocks Phyllis Matthews every time she leaves her house. She turns a corner, and there is another roof gone, a building wrecked, a home demolished.

But she is grateful. Her home is fine.

“One block away?” she said. “Not fine.”

Life is back to normal for many in Moss Point, one month after a 130 mile-per-hour tornado struck this summer. Kids have started school, and on some streets, there is no sign of the fury the twister wrought, or the 36 homes it destroyed.

But for the unlucky ones, who live in the two mile path the storm carved through town, the memories are unshakeable and the road to recovery still looks long.

“It’s pouring down raining in my house,” said longtime Moss Point resident Vicki Millender. There are two holes in her roof and sheet rock crumbles from her ceiling.

At the Sonic restaurant on Main Street, half the sign is gone, but it still reads “We are open.”

“Need a roof?” ads are everywhere, and the worst streets are so beaten they are dead quiet.

No one has come home.

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The predominately white First Baptist Church, which the twister spared, has welcomed the mostly Black congregation from the First Missionary Baptist Church, which the tornado wrecked. The two now hold services back to back.

“The community is pulling together – Black, white, rich, poor, old, young,” said Curley Clark, president of the Moss Point-Jackson County NAACP branch, who worships at First Missionary Baptist Church.

“You wonder how in the world all that destruction takes place without any loss of life,” he added. “We feel like God’s favored us.”

The tornado’s aftermath is proving to be a test for Moss Point, whose leaders have spent the last month fighting misinformation, pleading for federal aid and planning for the future.

Gov. Tate Reeves sent a disaster request to President Joe Biden last week, which means residents could get long-awaited money from FEMA if the president approves it.

In the desperate wait for aid, some people have arrived at City Hall with false information that FEMA money is already there.

Moss Point tornado damage expected to top $10 million. When will federal aid come?

Mayor Billy Knight tells them federal aid is not in Moss Point -- yet.

Instead, volunteers have arrived from across the nation, and from the Mississippi Coast.

Knight divides his time between working on tornado recovery and the city’s plans to build a pool, amphitheater, apartments and shops on the waterfront. “You just got to keep juggling,” he said from his office last week, and he expressed determination to bring Moss Point back better than it was before the storm.

In a speech for the First Baptist Church congregation, Knight said he posed a question: Why does it take a tornado to bring us together?

“These tragedies make us realize how bad we need each other,” he said.

Brenda Franklin went to hear Knight deliver his state of the city address last Thursday to a crowd packed inside the city’s conference center. She wanted to know when FEMA money might come.

There is still a tree on top of her shed, she said, and her roof, siding and ceiling all need repairs.

“We’re used to hurricanes,” Franklin said. “But a tornado? No.”

Only one home of the 36 destroyed had insurance. Winds whipped 53 other homes so hard they qualify under a category of “major damage,” but only four of them were insured, according to numbers Knight presented on Thursday.

“It caught us off guard. It was just totally unexpected. We didn’t know how to prepare,” Clark said. “Now, we’re just trying to gain some recovery.”

Ja’Leasa Bolden, a communications director at Moss Point schools, said students are back “as if the tornado had not happened.” The winds wiped out the football stadium’s press box and destroyed the baseball field, but maintenance teams fixed damage to the gym where NBA player Devin Booker once practiced. Bolden estimated the tornado only hurt five percent of students’ homes.

“We are rebuilding day by day,” she said. Even before the storm, the school year’s theme was “grit.”

Matthews, who also went to hear Knight on Thursday, hoped the people without damage would keep helping the ones with it.

“We have churches on every corner,” she said. “We gotta do better at helping each other.”

If Biden grants the disaster declaration, 16 counties in Mississippi would get money. It would include aid for homeowners in Jackson and Jasper counties, which both fared the worst in a series of 19 tornadoes that slammed the state in June.

“We’re going to be successful,” Knight said.

“I’m just praying that people will see what we’re fighting for.”