Members of the hard-hit community of Arabi are expressing shock, and also gratitude, that they are still alive following Tuesday’s devastating twister.
Published Mar. 24, 2022 1:02 PM EDT | Updated Mar. 25, 2022 8:39 AM EDT
Residents of Arabi, Louisiana, once again found themselves picking up the pieces in the wake of a natural disaster, following a tornado that rampaged through the New Orleans metropolitan area late Tuesday night and cut a path of destruction across the suburb as well as in the city's Lower Ninth Ward.
Dozens of homes and buildings were destroyed in the blink of an eye as a large tornado tore approximately an 11.5-mile path from around Gretna in Jefferson Parish to Arabi in St. Bernard Parish and then to New Orleans East under the cover of darkness. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), the EF3 tornado was on the ground for 17 minutes and had a maximum wind speed of 160 mph. The worst of the damage was confined to Arabi, which is a suburb of New Orleans.
The NWS also confirmed another tornado that spun from the same storm system. The twister touched down earlier in the evening across Lake Pontchartrain to the north of New Orleans in the community of Lacombe. This EF1 twister was on the ground for 12.2 miles and had max wind speeds of 90 mph.
Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies
Satellite photos show just how devasting the damage was in an area that had already been badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina nearly two decades earlier and Hurricane Ida just last year. Louisiana State Fire Marshal Butch Browning estimated that more than 150 homes had suffered significant or catastrophic damage.
"To see [the areas damaged] looks like a model town where someone just walked in and stepped on some houses. Literally, matchsticks that have been strewn around," U.S. Rep. of Louisiana Troy Carter told AccuWeather National Reporter Jillian Angeline on Wednesday. "Unfortunately, this was not a toy model. This was people's communities and people's homes, and it was quite devastating."
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In a city generally without basements, residents were forced to look elsewhere for shelter when the dark, ominous clouds were spotted in the area. Residents shared to AccuWeather's National Reporter Kim Leoffler how grateful they were to have made it out alive.
"We're pretty lucky," one resident Kathy McGoey told Leoffler.
McGoey, like many others, recalls how quickly the twister came and how little time she and her family had to get to a safe space.
"Basically, we got in and shut the door, and we didn't have time to do anything else," McGoey said.
Another family rode out the storm in their bathroom. The winds were so strong that wood pieces were slammed into the side of Tim Blake's family home.
"I thought I was going to die. I really did," Blake said.
Despite all the damage and all of the flattened houses, some things just couldn't be explained, like the pie on Blake's counter that was seemingly untouched after the tornado flung two by fours into their house and shattered their windows.
Leoffler also obtained footage showing household items that appeared untouched on the table of a destroyed home. Leoffler reported that the family who lived in the home had just moved to Arabi about six weeks ago.
Officials confirmed at least one death in Arabi. The victim was identified as Connor Lambert, a 25-year-old resident of Arabi who had just had dinner with his parents and had been on his way home when the storm struck. According to The Associated Press, the St. Bernard Parish coroner's office said he died of multiple blunt-force injuries.
Eight others were injured and required medical attention, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Edwards declared a state of emergency Wednesday afternoon following the destruction across St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes.
As neighbors helped one another with cleanup efforts on Wednesday, the community was filled with love and support.
"The lesson we can take from this is what it means to be neighbors to one another," Edwards said after visiting and speaking with the residents on Wednesday.
"It's just stuff. It can be replaced," Friscoville resident Michelle O'Neill said to NOLA.com.
Damage in St. Bernard Parish following the tornadoes that hit Louisiana on March 22, 2022. (Twitter/@nolaready)
Carter told Angeline that an additional round of federal resources for disaster recovery had just been announced Tuesday ahead of the storms, designating another $1.27 billion in federal resources to assist the state with recovery from Ida, with another $4.6 billion going to Baton Rouge and $450 million to Lake Charles -- areas that had been impacted by hurricanes Delta and Laura.
"And now here we are today, starting on yet a whole new discussion of resources for people who were unfortunately still building from previous storms who find themselves now in the throes of a very quick-moving tornado," Carter said.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the residents of New Orleans as resilient people in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
"We know that we are also on the frontlines of climate change, and this is just another example of that. My team, my administration has responded to over 15 emergency declarations in the less than four years, and it has been the response of the public that has truly gotten us through them," said Cantrell.
The Big Easy is no stranger to tornadoes. At least seven significant (EF2 or stronger) twisters have crisscrossed Orleans Parish since 1950, according to the Tornado Archive. The most recent large tornado was an EF3 which raked 10 miles through areas from just east of the industrial canal to Lake Borgne on Feb. 7, 2017, injuring 33 people.
The tornado that hit New Orleans this week featured 160-mph wind speeds, 10 mph stronger than the winds delivered by the 2017 EF3 tornado that hit nearby, and the two twisters each carved a path through the same roadway, Cardenas Drive in New Orleans, according to AccuWeather Senior Weather Editor Jesse Ferrell. “This week’s tornado path,” Ferrell added, “was also less than a mile east of the 1953 F2 tornado which took a similar northeast path.”
The tornadoes and the associated storm were a part of the same system that hit parts of Texas and other South Central states this week. At least two deaths have been blamed on the storm system, and between Monday and Tuesday, more than 50 confirmed tornadoes touched down during the outbreak, but that number is expected to change as storm surveys were still ongoing.
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