CALHOUN, La. (KNOE) – People in Calhoun are still picking up the pieces from Friday night’s tornado. The tornado was confirmed along Highway 151. People there say the tornado ripped through their yards in the blink of an eye.
“I’d say 45 seconds,” Ryan Hennigan recalls.
“It was just like a giant wall of clouds just spinning super fast,” Sarah Rogers describes.
Sarah and her brother Daniel Rogers say they watched the storm as it destroyed the area near Highway 151.
“It touched down and we saw trees flying in the air,” Daniel says.
Those trees were flying right by Ryan Hennigan’s house as they covered his driveway. He was home during the storm, but says he was shocked to see the damage left behind.
“I never heard any noise, nothing but trees cracking and wind blowing,” he says. “I didn’t know it was a tornado until we came down here to my sister-in-law’s house.”
Saturday morning, dozens of volunteers came to help their neighbors clean up the damage. No matter how big or small, they’re all doing their best to help out.
“I’m picking up logs,” young Camden McGuire says.
Hennigan says the most amazing part is that many people who came to cut his trees down were complete strangers.
“There are so many people around and they came and cleared it,” Hennigan says. “I don’t hardly know anybody, they just came from everywhere I guess.”
The one word everyone is using today – “blessed.”
“I’m just glad nobody got hurt,” Sarah says.
“Yeah, we’re pretty blessed,” Daniel adds.
And Hennigan agrees. “We were really really blessed. There were a lot of other people who were evidently not blessed,” he says.
The people there continue to pick up the pieces and count those blessings one fallen limb at a time.
By Olivia Russell | Posted: Apr 14, 2018
