Damage assessments and cleanup drives were underway around New Orleans on Wednesday after a powerful tornado ripped through the city’s Lower 9th Ward and several suburban communities on late Tuesday.
A dark funnel touched down at 0030 GMT on Wednesday, ripping roofs off homes, flipping cars, killing at least one person and injuring multiple others in the Arabi area of St. Bernard Parish.
Parish spokesperson John Lane said that the first responders found a 26-year-old man dead near his home. Eight other people with minor injuries were taken to a hospital.
“Everybody has been accounted for that we know of at this point,” he added.
The meteorologists from National Weather Service assessed the damage on Wednesday and said that the tornado was at least an EF3 on the five-point Enhanced Fujita Scale, with strong winds of 136 to 165 mph (219 to 266 kph).
According to poweroutage.us, about 2,300 homes were without electricity as of late Wednesday afternoon. Quick power restoration was expected because of the favorable weather conditions and the number of electrical crews and volunteers assisting with recovery.
Much of the southern Louisiana is still recovering from a Category 4 storm, Hurricane Ida, a last August storm that shattered rural communities south of New Orleans and killed more than 100 people in several US states and the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, New Orleans, a city with a majority-Black population, is still traumatized by the Hurricane Katrina of 2005, one of the most powerful storms that killed at least 1,800 people.
Congressman Troy Carter said that the officials are communicating with federal agencies to ascertain what support is available to help the affected communities.
Governor John Bel Edwards said at the press conference that the damage to the public infrastructure was most likely not widespread enough to qualify for public assistance. “There was a significant amount of damage, but at this point of time we don’t know whether we’re going to meet the threshold needed to qualify for federal assistance,” he said.
Mayor Latoya Cantrell said in a news briefing that the tornado mostly spared Orleans Parish and the City of New Orleans to the west where no injuries or significant damage were reported.
The residents spent the day picking through debris and rubble piles where their houses once stood, while the utility crews worked to repair the ruptured power lines.
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