After last year’s hurricane, another tornado has hit New Orleans. At least one person died and a lot of damage was reported.
A tornado caused significant damage in the New Orleans area of southern Louisiana. At least one person died, said the sheriff of the particularly hard-hit community of St. Bernard, James Pohlmann, according to media reports on Tuesday evening (local time).
Several residents were also injured. “There is greater damage,” he added. The hurricane destroyed or damaged houses, uprooted trees and downed power lines, especially in the Arabi district, local media reported.
“Big and Extremely Dangerous”
Several thousand households are without electricity, the website PowerOutage.us reported, citing the suppliers. The weather service described the tornado that raged in the area around 7:30 p.m. local time as “large and extremely dangerous”. Authorities called on residents to seek shelter.
The region was hit by Hurricane Ida last year and in 2005 by devastating Hurricane Katrina, which caused catastrophic damage and flooding in and around New Orleans. At that time around 1800 people died. More tornadoes were reported from Texas and Oklahoma on Monday. According to media reports, there was also a dead person there.
McInnis urged residents, during a news conference Tuesday, to contact his office before attempting to rescue neighbors. He witnessed emergency responders save a girl who was trapped inside her home’s ventilation system, he said. The girl’s family had been searching for her before firefighters arrived, McInnis added.
Lane said he has not seen this kind of devastation since Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall here along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. Large swaths of New Orleans were devastated by Katrina, he told The Post, but what happened Tuesday night “is much more localized — two different types of devastation, but nevertheless, this is significant.”
Residents wandered the streets here in the suburb just east of New Orleans late Tuesday night to take a first look at the damage. Some wore pajamas and others held flashlights to avoid the snarled power lines downed by the storm.
