ARABI, La. — There’s a little yellow house in Arabi untouched by the powerful tornado that ripped through Tuesday night.
“It’s really a pretty house, it’s very pretty,” said Annette Dugan, sitting in the driveway of her home two streets over. “It’s a blessing.”
It will soon be a temporary home to Dugan and her family, as her home on Royal Street needs massive repairs.
“Our whole roof in the back is like, destroyed,” she said.
Dugan and her family were watching weather coverage Tuesday night, when it became clear Arabi was in the crosshairs.
“And my husband screamed at me from the front room and said, ‘Bathroom. Now. Dogs.’ And I met him. And as soon as we got in there, maybe a minute later, boom.”
Boom.
The sound of a horse trailer from the barn hundreds of yards away slamming into the back of their house. The impact ripped off the roof where she and her husband were taking cover and blew out the windows elsewhere in her home.
The trailer then crashed through power lines across the street and landed in a grassy area more than a block from its starting point.
“It was real quick, and then it was over. It was like the calm, you know,” said Dugan. When she came out to see the destruction, Royal Street looked totally different.
Her neighbor’s home is ripped apart. Roofs are splintered in a hopscotch pattern of the storm’s indiscriminate destruction.
As she tried to figure out what she’d do next, she got a call from her son’s boss with an offer to stay at his vacant home. The little yellow house, just two streets over.
“It’s like, oh Lord, bless you Jesus!” Dugan said of the phone call. “It’s just full circle.”
Full circle, because that yellow house is the house Annette grew up in. It’s the house her family had to sell after Katrina, just a year before her mom passed away.
“When he called me I just kind of had tears in my eyes. I said, ‘Mom and Dad,’” she said, explaining her dad passed away in college. “’ I’m back in your house".
She’ll soon be back under the roof that raised her. A temporary safe harbor, but a forever reminder that no matter the years or the distance, a parent’s love weathers the storm.
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