ASHLAND - After the storm came the calm.

The weather broke clear and bright Monday across Northeast Mississippi, contrasting greatly with the tornadoes, thunderstorms and flooding of the two previous days.

Two of the state's members of Congress visited storm-ravaged counties in Northeast Mississippi on Monday, envisioning federal assistance from temporary housing for displaced families to expediting logging permits to salvage damaged timber.

A day after weekend weather killed six people in the region, survivors and volunteers were patching roofs, cutting fallen trees and cleaning up the debris left by winds as high as 150 mph.

Utility crews put up new power poles and restrung electric lines, and disaster professionals started estimating losses. Red Cross workers and even area residents showed up to offer recovery workers and victims a meal, a bottle of water and a kind word.

Some of the day's most encouraging words came from members of Mississippi's Congressional delegation. Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Travis Childers toured several of the affected counties, with state House Speaker Billy McCoy and local officials, promising any federal assistance they could channel.

"Obviously, all of these families in the 17 homes destroyed need places to stay," Wicker told officials in Benton County, where a twister early Sunday morning killed two people, sent several more to hospitals and inflicted damage from light to total destruction on scores of houses.

"One thing that's a possibility is that we could get some Katrina cottages or some Katrina trailers, if y'all need that."

Childers said seeing the damage and talking with survivors convinced him the area would have no problem qualifying for federal disaster assistance.

"I have seen a lot of sad situations in the last few days - people who've lost everything they had," Childers said. "In a county like Benton County, they certainly have limited resources, but their emergency management offices are doing a superb job. This is where government needs to step in and help."

The stories that come from such devastation are both predictable and unique. Kimberly Strickland of Ashland choked back tears to tell of hearing a huge tree fall, cutting nearly in two the mobile home she shared with her husband, David, and their children.

Just down the road, Louie Bishop was happy that the storm took only part of the roof off the tiny handbuilt home he and his wife share.

"The Lord blessed us," he told Wicker and Childers. Informed that he should receive a tarp as a temporary remedy against rain later this week, the visibly frail man expressed his gratitude.

"And y'all let me know any way I can help," he told the officials.

In addition to deaths, injuries and the loss of homes and belongings, Benton County officials are particularly concerned about the impact that thousands of acres of damaged or destroyed timber will have on the already struggling local economy.

"What would have been log timber is going to be pulpwood now," said Ricky Pipkin, president of the Benton County Board of Supervisors. "It's going to be worth $500 to $1,000 less per acre than it would have. And of course, it's already worth less because when the economy's down, timber's down more."

The harvest itself, Pipkin said, will be "painstaking."

"It takes forever, and it cuts production," he said. "A lot of it will probably ruin before they can get it."

The National Weather Service examined Sunday's tornado tracks and the damage left behind, including the twister that killed one person in Abbeville.

"Right now we've classified the tornado that hit Lafayette County as an EF2, with winds of about 130 miles an hour, and the one around Ashland in Benton County was an EF3, with winds of 145 miles an hour," said Andy Snezak, an NWS forecaster. No rain is forecast until Friday, when a fast-moving cold front may bring a chance of thunderstorms.

This weekend's disasters added to the toll of 10 deaths and widespread devastation that an April 23 tornado left in a 150-mile stretch of central Mississippi.

"We wish we didn't have so much practice at this," Wicker said. "But Mississippi people are famous for acting like grown-ups; these things happen. We're here to help any way we can."

Contact Errol Castens at (662) 281-1069 or errol.castens@djournal.com.