As of early this week, there were still tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Mississippi without electricity, running water or both following the storm that coated a large portion of the state in ice Jan. 24-25.
The hardship is getting old. People are tired of being cold, feeling grungy or going without hot meals. There’s also been a couple of dozen deaths attributed to the storm and its aftermath.
The widespread natural disaster has led some to question whether enough was done to prepare for an ice storm for which officials were given several days’ advanced notice by forecasters.
Gov. Tate Reeves has been faulted for not mobilizing the National Guard as quickly as some neighboring states did. Utility companies are being questioned whether they did enough regular maintenance, such as tree trimming, to reduce the risk of power outages from limbs that break or trees that fall when they get weighted down by ice.
The frustration is understandable. So is the second-guessing. Still, Nick Bain, a former state lawmaker from Corinth, whose community was among those hit the hardest, had it right when he said, “It’s hard to criticize anybody in this type of deal in my view. Could people have been more prepared? Maybe, but it’s hard to prepare for a generational storm.”
The last time this state saw as much ice as this was more than 30 years ago, during a 1994 winter storm that devastated many of the same areas, primarily the Delta and North Mississippi, as did this one. Reeves believes that when the toll of destruction is added up, the 2026 storm might become the new benchmark in Mississippi for ice-induced misery.
Utility companies in the state reported almost 200,000 customers without power at the peak of the outages. Some counties were put almost entirely in the dark as major transmission lines went down. The number of service lines that had to be replaced or restrung was gargantuan. And restoration efforts were slowed by iced-over roads and highways that made travel slow and dangerous, and by below-freezing outdoor temperatures that made the work more physically difficult.
There is no way all of that work could be completed quickly and safely, despite the best efforts of the utility crews from Mississippi and those brought in from other states. Nor could the utility companies attack everyone’s outage at once. They had to prioritize, and that meant putting more populous areas ahead of less populous ones; putting essential businesses, such as hospitals, nursing homes, grocery stores and factories, ahead of less essential ones; and putting quicker fixes ahead of more time-consuming ones.
Sure, those in government and in the utility business could spend a fortune on preparations on the chance of an ice storm of this severity hitting every 30 years or so, but the cost of such prevention would have to be passed on in higher taxes and higher utility bills. If the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t justify such an investment, it’s no different than homeowners deciding to take their chances rather than buy a generator that they may never need.
Instead of second-guessing what transpired, it might be better to focus on how lucky Mississippi is to have thousands of people – from all levels of government, from the utility companies, from private companies, from faith-based charities, from other nonprofits – all pitching in to try to restore power and water service, clear debris and make travel safe. For some, this work is their job; for others, it’s their ministry. Whatever their motivation, it’s not easy work.
Let’s get through what could take weeks, if not months, of recovery. There will be plenty of time afterward to assess how Mississippi could improve on preparing and planning for the next natural disaster.
