As a monster tornado bore down, many in the Mississippi Delta had no chance of finding a shelter

Craig Fugate, a former administrator of FEMA, said that beyond the federal government, state governments, too, have a role to play in funding disaster preparedness. He’s concerned that there’s a resiliency divide hindering the ability of disadvantaged communities to prepare for storms and rebuild afterward.

“The consequences are more people are going to die, more people are going to suffer,” he said.

A family’s loss

Robert Barfield, a Rolling Fork police officer, had only a few hours left in his shift on March 24, a Friday evening, when he looked out over a field and saw the tornado’s wedge lit up by lightning.

Barfield, 24, could barely see through the sheets of rain, but he could make out the telephone poles snapping in front of him. The wind was so strong he couldn’t open the door of his patrol car to get out. He rode out the storm in the cruiser, covering his head with his hands as the vehicle rocked.

When it was over, he was dispatched to a mobile home park just off U.S. Highway 61.

The lots where residents once lived were “just disintegrated, just gone,” he said.

Barfield saw a boy he recognized from the local Little League team limping amid the ruin. “Robert, I can’t breathe,” the child told him. “I’m scared.” Barfield tried to help the boy before he was taken to the hospital. He had a collapsed lung but survived.

Then Barfield heard from another officer that he needed to check on his aunt. She lived a mile to the south, in Rolling Fork’s Blue Front neighborhood.

Mary Barfield Bush, 56, had settled in for the night when the storm hit, flipping her mobile home upside down and pinning her under a mattress. When Barfield arrived, he had to step over debris and climb through a hole that had been ripped in the home’s side.

The other officer had already warned him that his aunt might not have survived, but Barfield needed to be sure of it himself. That’s what he would have wanted if it were his mom.

“I wasn’t letting anybody tell me anything,” he said.

Barfield took her wrist to check her pulse. She was gone.

Barfield realized he needed to keep moving. The floor of his aunt’s battered trailer was now the ceiling, and it could cave in. And more people needed help.

“I had a duty to go to the next house,” Barfield said.

He kept working until Sunday morning. What he witnessed makes him believe Rolling Fork should have a public tornado shelter, so those who find it unsafe to remain in their homes won’t have to.

“Even if they lose their homes, they don’t lose their lives,” he said.

Lequita Barfield, 36, Bush’s daughter, is unsure whether her mother would have gone to a shelter that night if one had been available.

“We always think it’s going to blow over. We never expect to see it where we live,” she said.

She still can’t believe her mother is gone. Bush worked as a caregiver and had a smile that “lit up the room,” she said. At get-togethers, Bush liked to sing and get people up to dance.

“I’m trying to handle it the best way I know how,” Lequita Barfield said. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with. It hurts.”

To the north of Bush’s neighborhood, Sammie Jackson was in his wood-frame house on Walnut Street when the storm leveled it, leaving only the floor intact.

During the twister, he tried to cover himself with a mattress, alongside a friend who had come over with her daughter and grandbaby. The wind stripped the mattress away. He thinks they’re “blessed” to have escaped without serious injuries but wishes they’d had somewhere to go that was designed to withstand life-threatening winds

“If we had a shelter, that’s where we would have gone,” he said.

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  Sammie Jackson sits on all that remains of his house in Rolling Fork. Rory Doyle for NBC News

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  Concrete steps, right, used to lead to Sammie Jackson’s home.Rory Doyle for NBC News