Gerald Herbert and Rebecca Santana
ARABY, Louise (AP) – A tornado that threatened New Orleans overturned a school bus, ripped off roofs and set up a house with a family of three in the middle of Prasquita Street. Two people were killed when a storm front flew across the south.
Other tornadoes caused by the same storm system caused so much damage in Texas that the governor declared disaster in 16 counties and destroyed buildings in Alabama where torrential rainfall was recorded.
Several people were injured. Among those killed were a woman north of Dallas, Texas, and a man in St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans. Authorities did not immediately describe how they were killed.
New Orleans has escaped significant damage, Mayor Latoya Cantrell wrote on Tuesday. But Arabi, a community east of the city, was unlucky – a tornado flew there and in Lacombe, across Lake Ponchartren in the east.
Television stations broadcast live footage of the storm as it flew through the metropolitan area on Tuesday night.
Rescuers then searched Arabia, east of the city’s Lower 9th Suburbs, where St. Bernard Parish President Guy McKinnis said the tornado had caused significant damage to the area devastated by Katrina, and again when Category 4 hurricane Ida swept past year
Entergy reported that about 3,700 of them were left without electricity as Louisiana activated 300 National Guard staff to clear roads and provide safety and engineering support.
Stacy Mancus’s family has just completed renovations to their home in Arabia after Ida tore off a roof and caused extensive water damage. When a tornado broke through their street Tuesday, she huddled in the laundry with her husband; two children aged 16 and 11; and dogs as part of their new roof demolished.
“We are alive. Here is what I can say at this point. We have four more walls and part of the roof. I consider myself lucky, ”Mancuza said. However, Twister was the third time they received serious weather damage since Katrina in 2005.
There was a strong smell of natural gas in the air, and broken power lines forced the staff of the Ministry of Emergencies to walk slowly through the dark areas. Some houses were destroyed and debris hung from electrical wires and trees. The aluminum fishing boat was bent into a C shape with the engine across the road.
“I wasn’t mentally ready to see what I saw,” said Amy Sims, who jumped into her car when the tornado warning sounded and drove to the Arab Heights area to check on her cousin Amanda Hotard and her family.
She said ambulance crews and paramedics, some crying, dodged live wires as they walked door to door on destroyed homes. On Wednesday, she said her cousin’s house and family were in order, but the houses around them were destroyed.
“It looked like a bomb had exploded,” she said.
Michel Malasovich, who also lives in Arabia, wrote to relatives to make sure they were safe when “suddenly the lights started flashing.” Her husband, coming out on the porch, saw a twister coming towards them.
“It’s just getting louder and louder,” Malasovich said. After she passed, they went out to inspect the damage – some columns were demolished from their porch and the windows of her jeep were broken. Others were worse: “Our neighbor’s house is now in the middle of the street.”
A family of three was in the house when it rose into the air, and the couple got out from under the rubble, seeking help to rescue their daughter, still inside by breathing machine, neighbors and authorities said.
“We had one rescue – a house that was actually built and torn down in the middle of the street. The young girl was in a ventilator, her father was looking for firefighters to come to the rescue, to come to the rescue, “said the president of the parish of St. Bernard Guy McKinnis. “And they were already there, taking care of the young lady, and she’s fine.”
As the storm front moved east, an obvious twist smashed a metal building and smashed windows east of Mobile Bay in Baldwin County, Alabama. The weather service said more than 20 inches of rain fell in the central city of Alabama in the night in the city of Silaka, and in the city of Toxico, Alabama, the roofs of several houses were damaged, where a tornado warning was issued.
Wild weather eased when he moved to South Carolina early Wednesday, but the weather service warned that individual tornadoes remain possible in southern Georgia.
There was bad weather in Texas on Monday, and several tornadoes were recorded along Interstate Corridor 35. In Elgin, broken trees stood on rural roads and pieces of metal torn by strong winds hung from the branches as residents cautiously walked through the mess to clean up the remains of broken ceilings, destroyed walls and damaged cars.
59-year-old J.D. Harkins said he saw two tornadoes pass by his home in Elgin.
“There used to be a barn,” Harkins said, pointing to an empty area of his uncle’s littered area.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said 10 people were affected by the storm in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly affected elsewhere. The Grayson County Emergency Management Agency said a 73-year-old woman was killed in Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but did not provide details.
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Associated Press reporters Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Ken Miller in Oklahoma City; Jill Blid in Little Rock, Arkansas; Terry Wallace in Dallas; Janet McConaughey of New Orleans and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
