By Emily Williams
and Billy Davis

The cold weather that hit the area this week has already taken a toll on many Panola Countians, but it’s made things especially hard for an Enid Shores woman.

Nancy Norden, 61, said she moved from Memphis to the residential development near Enid Lake where her parents, who are now deceased, had retired, to be closer to her mother.

“I’m a mama’s girl,” she said.

The mobile home she lives in has no stove or heaters. She had nothing to keep her warm but an electric blanket.

When she would leave her bedroom to make a sandwich, she said, by the time she was done her fingers seemed frost-bitten and she would return to the blanket, her only means of heat.

Norden said she had a stroke last year and is also recovering from breast cancer, along with other physical problems.

She has no family to help her after her parents died, she said.

 Saturday, out of fear she might die of hypothermia, she called the Panola County Sheriff’s Department for help.

“I thought I could find a shelter somewhere,” she said. “I was scared.”

Sheriff’s deputy Earl Burdette went to Norden’s home and became concerned that her life was in danger if she stayed there in the cold.

She was urged to get to a hotel that night but she was reluctant to ask for help.

So Burdette put a heater in the bedroom she stayed in most of the time so she could get through the night.

The next day, Burdette called Panola County Emergency Management Director Daniel Cole and Panola County Supervisor Kelly Morris, in whose district Norden resides.

They checked Norden into a local hotel to keep her warm.

The next question is “Where will she go after her  time at the hotel has expired?”

“We don’t have a shelter around here,” said Morris.

Morris was among supervisors who have signed an emergency proclamation sought by Cole (see related story, page A1).

Panola County EMA has not ruled out opening an emergency shelter, and the sheriff’s department, acting on its own, is working with Hosanna Worship Center to operate a shelter there.

Some help is available for low-income residents to afford  home heating fuels and to pay electrical bills.

Mississippi’s Department of Human Services oversees a federally funded program that helps qualified residents pay their utility bills.

“The problem is that the money ran out,” said Brandon Presley, public service commissioner for the state’s Northern District.

A new allocation of funding, as much as $30 million, is expected to come to Mississippi this month, he said.

He said some utility companies, including Entergy Mississippi and Atmos, have ongoing programs to help customers afford utilities.

Presley said his office has been flooded with calls for help. Those calls, already coming in because of the recession, are expected to increase because of the arctic cold front set to hit Mississippi.

Presley said he plans to pursue rules that consumers cannot have their utilties turned off if the daytime temperature fails to reach about 32 degrees.

“You’ve got to appeal to the utility companies to have a heart and not just a mind,” he said.