A massive tornado hit New Orleans, Louisiana, on Tuesday, killing at least one person, destroying homes and downing power lines, in another setback for an area that has yet to fully recover. from last year’s Hurricane Ida.
“Big tornado in New Orleans! Seek shelter now!” the local office of the National Weather Service warned on Twitter at 8:35 pm (local time).
Images published on social media show that a dark cloud crossed several neighborhoods of the city. There are reports of damage in the Arabi, Gretna and St. Bernard Parish.
Authorities have informed local media that one person is dead. There is no official information on the number of injured and homeless. There are reports of people in the rubble of destroyed houses.
In Arabi, a suburb in eastern New Orleans, the tornado toppled roofs, trees and utility poles, NOLA.com reported. A video posted on Twitter by Fox 8 TV showed firefighters near a house in Arabi with no roof and walls torn down.
The tornado was caused by storms crossing the southern United States. “A squall or tornado is still possible in the next few hours,” the National Weather Service warned.
Much of southern Louisiana is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm that hit the region in August last year and devastated rural communities and killed more than 100 people in the southern Caribbean.
“This is the time of year when these events happen. Spring is the ideal time for severe weather,” said meteorologist Roger Erickson of the National Weather Service in Lake Charles.
Classes were canceled and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge closed its campus for the day.
New Orleans, known for jazz, cuisine and black history, is still traumatized by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, one of the biggest storms in the United States, which killed 1,800 people.
