NEW ORLEANS — The tornado that ripped through Arabi Tuesday night left some of its wrath for New Orleans East, leaving pockets of bad damage, though not nearly as bad as the 2017 tornado.
The National Weather Service said the tornado was "at least an EF-3" which would be winds estimated at between 136 and 165 miles per hour, though the storm may not have been at that strength when it ended up in New Orleans East.
While power was knocked out to the area Tuesday night, there were fortunately no reports of serious injuries or deaths. However, the darkness masked any issues until morning.
Much of the damage was on Coronado Drive near Prentiss Avenue, an area near Read Blvd. and Chef Menteur Highway, not too far from where the 2017 tornado did much more widespread damage.
While the breadth of the problems in New Orleans East wasn’t wide, the homes the tornado did strike suffered some heavy damage.
Colin Arnold, the city's director of emergency preparedness, said that about 50 buildings in New Orleans East suffered minor damage and about 5 or 6 buildings had medium to major roof damage.
John Green, who lives in the area said the entire thing lasted only about five seconds.
“Before the tornado came through, the signal on the phone came and by that time it was too late to hit the closet or jump in the tub, by the time we tried to do that, it had passed over,” he said. “My wife said, ‘everybody hit the floor,’” he recalled. “All the windows blew out. We finally made it outside and all of the vehicles’ windows were blown out. The kids were inside screaming and hollering.”
The trunk of a tree was indeed impaled in one of the vehicles.
Despite the damage on a handful of streets, there were no reports of any school closures and while there is no doubt that several people have a daunting rebuilding task ahead, it could have been much worse.
“It looks like we’ve got a few pockets out here where we can condense and coordinate our activities,” said Councilman Oliver Thomas. “We’re the most resilient people in the world. When you talk about neighbor helping neighbor… we come together.”