As the tornado bore down on the motel where he stays off Chef Menteur Highway near Wilson Road in New Orleans East, Malcolm Ballard said it rushed through “like a powerful force,” stripping roofs off motel rooms and slinging a trailer across the parking lot. Terrifying in its strength, Ballard said he saw the massive vortex crash through like a wild animal.
“He was a big wolf, a big ‘ol black bear,” Ballard said. “He came through here, and he was not playing no games.”
Residents and business owners along Chef Menteur called the tornado “huge” and said it “roared like a freight train” as it plowed across the road on one side, destroying buildings along the way. One resident, Glen Bode, said he saw the tornado from his house.
“I heard it like a freight train,” he said. “Then I saw debris high up in the sky, just spinning in circles.”
As it came down Chef Menteur, the tornado ripped the roof off the Royal Palms motel near Wilson and flipped mobile homes onto their backs at Parc D’Orleans. Chris Lyons, who lives in one of the overturned mobile homes, said his wife was inside when the hurricane blew through. She was taken to the hospital; Lyons said he expects she’ll be fine.
His mobile home was hurled three spaces over from where it once stood.
“It used to be over there, and it ended up over here,” Lyons said. “It’s kind of shocking what a tornado will do to a travel trailer.”
Blustering eastward along Chef Menteur, the tornado barreled through the mobile home park, two motels and into a warehouse owned by Cimarron Underground Services, a pipeline manufacturer. Kevin Strickland, a Cimarron manager, said the tornado pounded the side of the building, prompting him to usher his employees into his office.
“‘Wow’ is an understatement,” Strickland said. “We had a couple of little nicks and scratches from flying glass, but everyone’s safe.”
From the warehouse, the tornado continued swirling as it knocked down power poles and lines. Then it reached a gas station, blowing in the roof and shattering glass, before steering into a residential neighborhood. There, the tornado played havoc with homes and apartment buildings, leaving residents wondering what to do next.
Picking through the ruins of her home off Werner Drive, Keisha Ceilus could hardly speak as she searched through the destroyed house, its roof peeled away at one end. She recalled the fear of the tornado’s impact.
“I thought I’d just died and came back to life,” Ceilus said. “It was scary. Pray for us.”
Carlos Bernard was inside his apartment off Dodt Avenue when the tornado hit. It left a tire shop next door in rubble before smashing into his apartment, blowing down the front wall. Shaken but alive, Bernard worried he may be left homeless.
“We’re supposed to get free housing, right?” Bernard wondered. “I’m stuck out. I don’t know what to do.”
A block away from Dodt, homes along Laine Avenue lay battered by the tornado, which snapped trees at the trunk and left them strewn along the street. At her home off Laine, Gwendolyn Wallace tried to reckon how a food truck she owns – called Huck-A-Buck Lady, which sells hamburgers and hotdogs – had been tossed from one end of her driveway to the other without hitting an old broken-down Chevrolet Beretta still parked in between. The truck must weigh “over a ton,” she figured.
“How’d that tornado do that?” she said. “And how’d it miss that old raggety Beretta, which is the only damn thing that didn’t get damaged?”
On Chef Menteur nearby, the tornado also wrecked a convenience store called Sam’s Food & Liquor, where owner Abdel Saleh said he was standing outside but hurried back inside once the twister arrived. He told his employee to shut the door, and the room started shaking like it might come loose from the ground.
When the winds stopped, Saleh saw the store’s roof was gone, and glass shards lay among piles of candy bars, cereal boxes and toiletries knocked from shelves.
“We had death on our hands,” Saleh said. “But we’re OK.”
By Beau Evans
on February 07, 2017 at 4:40 PM, updated February 07, 2017 at 5:26 PM
