NEW ORLEANS--Crews were assessing the damage on Wednesday on the east side of New Orleans where a powerful tornado killed at least one person and injured eight others as it left a two-mile path of destroyed homes, uprooted power lines and overturned vehicles.
A dark funnel cloud touched down at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, flattening buildings and flipping over vehicles in the Arabi area of St. Bernard Parish.
A spokesperson for the parish, just east of downtown New Orleans, said first responders found a 26-year-old man dead near his home. Eight other people were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, parish spokesperson John Lane said.
"Everybody has been accounted for that we know of at this point," he said, adding that search and rescue teams had finished most of their work.
National Weather Service meteorologists surveying the damage said on Wednesday the tornado was at least an EF3 on the five-point Enhanced Fujita Scale, packing winds of 136 to 165 mph (219 to 266 kph).
About 2,300 customers were without power as of late afternoon Wednesday, according to poweroutage.us. Officials expected power restoration to progress quickly given favorable weather conditions and the amount of electrical crews and volunteers assisting with recovery.
Much of southern Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, a fierce Category 4 storm last August that devastated rural communities south of New Orleans and killed more than 100 people in several U.S. states and the Caribbean. New Orleans, a city with a majority-Black population, is still traumatized by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, one of the most powerful storms in U.S. history, which killed at least 1,800 people.
Officials are gathering information and communicating with federal agencies to determine what support is available to help affected communities, Congressman Troy Carter told a press gaggle. "This is one of those situations where, unfortunately, we’ve gotten too good at this because we’ve had too much practice," Carter said. "The beauty is the resiliency of the people."
Governor John Bel Edwards said at the press conference that he received calls from the White House and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), adding that damage to public infrastructure was likely not widespread enough to qualify for public assistance. "There was a significant amount of damage, as you can see, but at this point we don’t know whether we’re going to meet the thresholds necessary to qualify for federal assistance," he said.
