NEW ORLEANS — From the porch of Bianca Brindise’s home on Cohn Street in New Orleans, the amount of cleanup needed is a reminder of a very close call.
“I was in shock. I was like ‘Oh my God,’ I’ve never seen it this bad and for our street to be the main one to get hit it’s just, of course, just our luck right,” said Brindise.
Her Carrollton neighborhood is where an EF-0 tornado first touched down just after two o’clock Wednesday morning while she was asleep.
“We didn’t take cover. We actually came outside like true New Orleanians to see what was going on,” said Brindise.
The twister then made its way through downtown with winds up to 85 miles an hour, before ending its path across the river in Algiers.
“There are other areas of tree and limb damage across the city. This is a really strong to severe line of storms that came through and that other damage is likely just attributed to that,” said Lauren Nash with the National Weather Service.
The significant areas of damage are where the tornado started and ended, with fallen trees, snapped power poles, smashed cars, and damage to homes. In the height of the aftermath, up to 10,000 Entergy customers were without power.
Thankfully, that was the worst of it.
“We were just really lucky. We were lucky that people weren’t hurt which is a big deal,” said the city’s CAO of infrastructure Ramsey Green.
A big part of that is thanks to timing and alerts on your phone.
“Sometimes you only get a few minutes. So, when you get those alerts know what to do when you get them. So, people were in their safe places, they were asleep, and they were off the roads,” said Nash.
Cleanup Wednesday began quickly, but city leaders expect at least a week to get it all done.
“We’re going to continue to work this and recover the way we need to. We just ask the citizens to give us a hand with that, especially with debris removal,” said Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Colin Arnold.
Back on Cohn Street, that’s a team effort.
“It was absolutely insane. It was a mess,” said Brindise.
The city of New Orleans recently debuted a new alert system. To register for it all you have to do is text “NOLAREADY” to 77295.