The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors is considering making storm shelters at county barns accessible to the public as efforts to get grant money for shelters in Districts 4 and 5 bog down.
Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency was pursuing about $150,000 in Federal Emergency Management Agency grant money to install 12 shelters west of the Tombigbee River.
EMA Director Cindy Lawrence told the board during its Monday meeting the plan was to put four shelters each in Artesia, Crawford and Plum Grove. Each shelter could hold about 16 people, but new federal regulations require a bathroom and washing station to be installed, too, which would cut down the capacity.
While the county intends to continue pursuing the grant funds for those shelters, District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith said it needs to explore more opportunities for people west of the river, who currently have no public storm shelters at all.
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“It behooves us to figure out other means to get shelters for these citizens,” Smith said. “It’s not going to go away. Every time we have a storm, or threat of a storm, the calls start and all that comes with us. We have a real problem when 75% of the people west of the river live in mobile homes.”
District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks suggested using storm shelters at the county road department’s satellites for the public. Shelters were built at each satellite so employees could take shelter when severe weather threatened.
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“I know in District 5 we have a storm shelter, and it’ll hold about 35 or 40 people,” Brooks said. “There are shelters at every satellite. … In inclement weather, we need to open up our gates at the satellites and let people use the shelters because they’re sitting there.”
People live near the satellites, Brooks said, and could take shelter in case of a storm. The major obstacle is that the shelters are behind a gate.
“I don’t know how to do it, but we’ve got these facilities throughout the county,” he said.
Road Manager Mike Aldridge suggested moving them closer to, or outside of, the fences.
“I never understood why we didn’t set those things next to the fence where you could park outside the fence and come inside the shelter,” Aldridge said. “They ought to have been set where people could access them. We’ve got shelters that probably nobody’s been in, and if people could just pull in I think they would use them.”
Aldridge said he wasn’t sure how much it would cost to move them but said he thought they could be moved.
Brooks asked Aldridge to look at the feasibility of moving the existing shelters.
Because the county paid for them, they may be used by anyone, Lawrence said.
“The rule at one time (if funded by FEMA grants) was that if it was on government property it was only for employees,” she said. “But you can do what you want to do with your own. You can move the ones you’ve already got if you want to.”
Board approves cremating unclaimed bodies
The board also approved cremation of two unclaimed bodies.
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“One individual doesn’t have any family, and the other individual’s (family) told me they’re not getting involved,” Coroner Greg Merchant said. “They’ve walked away and abandoned them.”
The second person’s surviving family was in Texas, and was the child of an ex-girlfriend, Merchant said. She told him she hadn’t seen the man in 20 years and didn’t want to get involved.
District 3 Supervisor John Holliman moved, with a second from Brooks, to allow Merchant to have the bodies cremated at a cost of $500 each.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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