A Yazoo County Sheriff’s Department that warned of imminent flooding in a subdivision near Yazoo City was misinformed and the claim risked an unnecessary evacuation as severe weather battered central Mississippi on Wednesday, a state official says.
“If you or someone that you know lives in the Eastbrook subdivision on Highway 16 in Yazoo County you need to evacuate IMMEDIATELY!!! The levee is about to break on the lake and the houses will flood. Please get out ASAP!!!” the sheriff’s department wrote on its Facebook page on April 10. The warning drew widespread media coverage, including in an Associated Press story that the Mississippi Free Press and other publications republished.
There was one problem: The Eastbrook subdivision was not about to flood, nor was the levee moments from breaking. A video that WLBT Meteorologist Chase Franks shared on Twitter of the access road to the subdivision awash in water helps to explain the confusion, but the flood of water to the other side of the levee is natural: a culvert channels water from the lake when it overflows by design.
Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality Dam Safety Division Chief Willie McKercher explained the situation in an interview with the Mississippi Free Press late on Wednesday.
“The Eastbrook subdivision is built up around the lake impounded by the dam that was at risk,” McKercher said. Most of the homes in that subdivision are intentionally built high enough that they would not flood even had the levee failed, he added. If it had, only a single home would have potentially flooded—and emergency services were already on hand to evacuate its residents.
Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality Dam Safety Division Chief Willie McKercher explained on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, that the risk to the Yazoo County levee came from an undersized culvert. Photo courtesy Jack Willingham
Ultimately, the levee was not breached. Another issue caused the water to spill over the road: the culvert built to channel floodwaters is simply too small, a perennial issue for the little community.
“A year and a half ago the pipe got clogged,” resulting in the same
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