Lafayette High graduates help restore power after Winter Storm Fern ravages county

While thousands of Lafayette County homes sat dark after Winter Storm Fern, three recent Lafayette High School graduates were outside helping rebuild the grid that powered them. Zaylen Booker, Carter Smith and Landon Denley, all products of the Lafayette Career and Technical Center lineman program, joined the recovery effort as ice, snapped lines and fallen trees left families waiting for lights, heat and water to come back.

The storm arrived after state officials issued an emergency declaration on Jan. 22, 2026, ahead of the freezing rain and ice expected to sweep Mississippi from Jan. 23 through Jan. 27. By 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 25, more than 24,000 North East Mississippi Electric Power Association customers were without power, along with more than 5,000 Oxford Utilities customers. Other reports put the number of Lafayette County residents still in the dark at roughly 16,000, and one estimate said the storm cut power to 75% of the county. Oxford issued a shelter-in-place order as iced-over roads, downed power lines and fallen tree debris made travel dangerous and outages widespread.

North East Mississippi Electric Power Association said its crews and mutual-aid partners worked around the clock, first restoring backbone three-phase lines that fed critical infrastructure such as water and gas facilities. The county later opened a Disaster Recovery Center for residents affected by the Jan. 23-27 winter ice storm, while emergency managers set up warming centers and said more locations could open if needed. The Mississippi National Guard also helped distribute water and MREs and supported urgent medical transfers during the recovery.

For Booker, the work was both physical and mental, and he said the storm was not something anyone could fully prepare for. He credited the lineman class with giving him the discipline and maturity needed for the job, and said the thank-you cards from children in the community meant a great deal. Smith said he spent 27 straight days repairing broken poles, clearing debris and restoring lines from sunrise to sunset. Denley was part of the same homegrown response, a reminder that Lafayette County’s recovery depended not just on outside crews, but on young workers trained close to home.

That pipeline was built intentionally. Grant Crockett, who became director of The TECH in 2022 after serving in Lafayette County School District roles including assistant high school principal, saw students expressing interest in lineman school and began researching how to create a program. He worked with local industry partners, secured support from Superintendent Jay Foster and won school board approval. The center now offers health sciences, automotive repair, utility linemen training and work-based learning, and Crockett has said most graduates stay in Lafayette County to work.

Winter Storm Fern exposed how fragile the county’s power system could be, but it also showed what Lafayette County had already invested in its own recovery. When the lights went out, the people trained to bring them back were already here.