After a tornado hit New Orleans, hatchet-wielding firefighters have been walking up and down the debris-strewn Chef Menteur Highway, checking for people missing or trapped in the damage.
The storm flipped over cars, tore roofs off homes, broke tall power poles off their foundations and flipped a food truck upside-down.
“I wasn’t expecting all of this,” said Randy Hess, Madisonville Fire Chief. “I didn’t think it would be this bad. But this particular area, this path right here is pretty bad.”
“You’re in a wide open area right here, so the winds have really nothing to stop them, but in town, you have a lot of older houses and they have tin roofs and you would have had plenty of projectiles flying through town, which could have been really bad,” he added
Artie Chaney, a local resident, said her house was destroyed in the storm.
“When we looked up in the air, we could see the debris in the distance,” she said.
“And before we knew it, it was just barreling down on us. And we ran — the lights went out — we ran down the hallway and to the middle bedroom and then we just heard glass shattering, doors, we thought we were not going to make it, to tell you the truth.”
“Nobody got any physical damage, but… we got emotional. All my grandkids [grew up here], this is memories, everything’s just gone.”
The city’s mayor says there are initial reports of dozens of injuries, including two that are serious.
(AP)