Louisiana tornadoes batter area, injure 20

NEW ORLEANS — The tornadoes that struck southeastern Louisiana yesterday injured about 20 people, destroyed homes and businesses, flipped cars and trucks, and left about 10,000 customers without power, but no deaths were reported, the governor said.

Gov. John Bel Edwards took an aerial tour and made a disaster declaration before meeting with officials in New Orleans. The worst damage was in the same 9th Ward that was so heavily flooded in Hurricane Katrina.

Edwards, a Democrat, said he was heartbroken to see some of the same people suffering again, and promised that the state will provide the affected citizens with the resources they need as quickly as possible.

He said seven parishes were hit by tornadoes in an afternoon of tumultuous weather across southeastern Louisiana.

Hatchet-wielding firefighters walked up and down the debris-strewn Chef Menteur Highway after the storm, looking for anyone missing or trapped. Their primary search came up empty, and a secondary search was planned to make sure and to better assess the damage.

Edwards said he called in the Louisiana National Guard to police and secure the area, and urged people to stay away.

“This is not a time to sightsee,” he said.

The storm ripped apart homes, toppled a gas station canopy, snapped tall power poles and flipped a food truck upside-down. It left shards of metal hanging from trees, and trapped a truck driver as power lines wrapped around his cab.

The wall of severe weather also delivered heavy rain and hail to Mississippi and Alabama.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the White House was monitoring the weather’s impact, and that President Trump would be reaching out to local and state officials.

Yoshekia Brown lost everything to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now she’s lost everything again: Threequarters of her home in eastern New Orleans collapsed.

“Sister, your house is gone,” her brother told her as she drove home.

She didn’t believe it until she saw it herself.

“I lived in between two blighted properties. One of those would have been gone before my house,” she said. “It’s just gone. Like the movie ‘Twister.’ ”

Luckily, her 2-year-old son and three dogs have survived, and her home was insured.

She said she’s not sure what to do next, but said “something good has to come from this.”

AP PHOTOS IN THE PATH: Claire White, above, sits in a chair and talks on the phone next to her husband, Roy White, and dog, ‘JD’, across the street from their destroyed home after a tornado tore through the eastern neighborhood in New Orleans, below.