A tornado attack in New Orleans tossed an entire house of Castellanos into the street with their daughter in a wheelchair inside.
Authorities say that the tornado that ripped through a suburb of New Orleans lifted one house into the air and dropped it into the middle of a street with a family inside. The storm has ripped the one-story home from its cinderblock piers in a suburb of New Orleans.
Dea Castellanos, the mother of the girl in the wheelchair, heard the rain and wind outside as she sat on her living room couch. Her daughter, who has muscular dystrophy, was in another room. The next thing Castellanos knew, the entire house began spinning.
Castellanos said she could feel the house whip through a full rotation, and she wound up in a bedroom. During an interview with The Associated Press, Castellanos said: “Tossed about 30 feet (9 meters) from its lot, the one-story house crashed down in the middle of a street.”
Within moments, neighbors saw the girls’ parents climbing out of the wreckage, calling frantically for help, their daughter was still in her bedroom inside the rubble, calling for her mom.
Neighbors spotted an empty wheelchair on the curb, prompting a search for the owner who is a disabled girl that needs a respirator. Friends and relatives helped Castellanos clean out what belongings could be saved from the shattered home, like clothes and mementos.
One of the birds Castellanos kept as pets were standing on the floor, scattered debris all around. Castellanos said she was thankful for everyone who had come to help with the cleanup, bringing food, garbage bags, and work gloves.
Chuck Heirsch, a local man from the area said: “I saw the house and I saw my neighbor trying to get his daughter out of there. They were screaming. His wife was hysterical.” Heirsch then phoned 911.
After a dramatic weight, rescue workers emerged from the house with the girl wrapped in a blanket, she was hospitalized but is “doing fine,” according to St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis.
At least one person died in the tornado Tuesday night, McInnis said. Authorities said a 26-year-old man who lived in Arabi was found dead outside of his home. His identity and the circumstances of his death have not yet been made public.
Several others had been hospitalized and treated for more minor injuries. A series of serious storms passed through the southern US early this week, hitting the New Orleans area particularly hard on Tuesday.
St. Bernard Parish and Arabi were both hit particularly hard by the storm, much of southern Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, the devastating Category 4 storm that hit the region last August.
The storm front brought heavy rain and powerful winds to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. According to the National Weather Service, around 5 million people in the region were under some kind of weather warning at one point.
Arabi is said to have been hit especially hard by the tornado. Some neighbors reportedly compared its landing to the violence of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the New Orleans area in 2005.
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