The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Five tornadoes rip through Deep South
Twister was one of five to hit Louisiana on Tuesday.
Twisters that tore up Louisiana on Tuesday injured 33 people and ruined 940 properties, but no one was killed.
NEW ORLEANS — Dwight Powell lost his Lexus to the massive tornado that injured 33 people and destroyed or seriously damaged 940 properties on a half-mile wide rampage through two miles of east New Orleans.
He had just parked it inside his garage to avoid hail damage when the twister struck. At least his Yukon pickup truck would be OK, he thought: It was in a friend’s repair shop, 60 miles north. Then his phone rang. “The man called me this morning and said, ‘Man, the tornado hit your truck,’ ” Powell said Wednesday.
That’s a bad joke to tell a friend who just lost his house, he told him. But it wasn’t. The truck was slammed by another tornado that hit Donaldsonville, one of at least five confirmed twisters that tore up Louisiana on Tuesday as a line of severe weather moved across the Deep South.
Other tornadoes injured nine people in the Baton Rouge area and two north of Lake Pontchartrain, but nobody was killed, authorities said. Parts of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama also saw severe weather Wednesday, but no injuries.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a news release Wednesday that two people remained hospitalized, and that 78 spent Tuesday night in a shelter, which remained open.
His statement also said that although two-thirds of the 10,400 Entergy customers who lost power had their electricity restored, the rest may have to wait up to five days before getting their lights back on.
National Weather Service teams fanned out Wednesday in Louisiana and Mississippi, analyzing the destruction. They determined the twister that struck eastern New Orleans was an EF3 on the enhanced Fujita scale, meaning its winds ranged as high as 165 mph, capable of causing severe damage.
The state was counting the buildings damaged or destroyed, Mike Steele of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said Wednesday.
Powell had just finished restoring his house after buying it as blighted property.
“I was about to put my house on the market for sale this Friday. This Thursday, I was going to get homeowners and flood insurance,” he said.
He and an employee saw the tornado from the back door, and moved to the front.
“All we heard was that train sound, WooWooWoo BOOM! In 15 seconds it was over,” he said. The front of the house was intact, but “the whole back is gone,” he said.