(Reuters) – Search and rescue crews combed through rubble overnight in New Orleans after a tornado blasted the east side, killing at least one person, destroying homes and knocking down power lines.
A dark funnel cloud touched down at 7:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, flattening buildings and turning over vehicles in the Arabi area of St. Bernard Parish.
St. Bernard Parish Sheriff James Pohlmann said several people were injured as well as the one death.
“As soon as we get the areas cleared up a little bit, we will send more people out to do more of a search,” he told reporters late on Tuesday, adding that fire crews had rescued several trapped people.
The Washington Post, citing a spokesman for St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis, said the fatality was a 26-year-old man whom first responders found outside his home.
Local media footage showed rubble where houses once stood, debris across streets and power cables on the ground.
McInnis said the tornado took a straight line for a couple of miles. “We have a home that was lifted off its foundation and put into the middle of the street,” he said.
Much of southern Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, a fierce Category 4 storm last August that devastated rural communities to the south of New Orleans and killed more than 100 people in the several U.S. states and Caribbean.
New Orleans, where the majority are Black, is known for its jazz, Cajun-influenced cuisine and history as a slave port.
It is still traumatized by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, one of the most powerful storms in U.S. history, which killed at least 1,800 people.
The same storm front that produced Tuesday’s tornado brought heavy rain and winds to other parts of Louisiana, and to Mississippi and Alabama. It came a day after twisters also destroyed homes and injured people elsewhere in the region.
