Big Easy tallies cost of barrage of twisters
NEW ORLEANS — Dwight Powell lost his Lexus to the powerful 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 yesterday.
The truck was slammed by another tornado that hit Donaldsonville, one of at least five confirmed twisters tearing up Louisiana 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 yesterday, but no injuries.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a news release yesterday that two people remain hospitalized, and that 78 people spent Tuesday night in a shelter, which remains open.
National Weather Service teams fanned out yesterday in Louisiana and Mississippi, analyzing the destruction. They determined that the twister that struck eastern New Orleans was an EF3 on the enhanced Fujita scale, meaning its winds reached from 136 to 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 yesterday.