By Kevin McGill and Gerald Herbert | Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS — Severe storms blamed for a death in Mississippi spawned tornado-strength winds that demolished buildings in a south Louisiana city Wednesday while inundating streets in low-lying New Orleans with hours of steady rain that snarled traffic and strained the city’s antiquated drainage system.
Severe weather stretched across much of the Gulf South with reports of damage from Texas to the Florida panhandle.
A suspected tornado hit Slidell, Louisiana, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of New Orleans, Wednesday morning, ripping roofs off of buildings, partially collapsing others. Authorities said first responders had to rescue people trapped in one heavily damaged apartment building.
Police video showed tree limbs littering the streets and flooded yards that resembled Louisiana swamps. Outside a McDonald’s restaurant, a car was on its side, power poles leaned toward the ground and large pieces of the restaurant’s trademark golden arches were strewn about.
There were no reports of deaths or critical injuries in Slidell. National Weather Service meteorologist Christopher Bannan said investigators were surveying damage and data to officially determine the cause of the damage but that it was likely a tornado that is believed to have moved from Louisiana into Mississippi.
“I’ve never talked to God so much before in my life,” Robin Marquez said after huddling with coworkers in a two-story building that was heavily damaged.
Close to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of New Orleans. It came as the system of pipes and pumps that drains the city dealt with problems with its power generating system, forcing workers to divert power from one area to another as needed.
“During intense rain, the mission sometimes shifts from keeping the streets dry to draining them as quickly as possible,” the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, which operates the system, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
In Mississippi, the death of Shirley Wilson, 64, is being attributed to the storm. Wilson had several medical conditions that required her to have access to an electric oxygen machine at all times, Scott County Sheriff Mike Lee said. When her home in the central Mississippi county lost power, her oxygen machine shut down. Emergency responders couldn’t reach her until about 20 minutes after her grandchild called 911 early Wednesday, and she was pronounced dead.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said 72 homes were damaged.
In Texas, several people were rescued from homes and vehicles early Wednesday morning when flooding inundated parts of Jasper County, near the Louisiana line, authorities said.
All major roads into Kirbyville, a Jasper County town of about 2,000 people, were shut down early Wednesday due to the flooding, the sheriff’s office said. Shelters were being set up after about 50 people were displaced from their homes, Billy Ted Smith, the Jasper County emergency management coordinator, said. He estimated those people came from about 20 flooded homes and said there had been around half a dozen people rescued from vehicles. He said that no major injuries have been reported so far.
In the Houston suburb of Katy, strong thunderstorms that passed through the area around 2 a.m. Wednesday collapsed part of the roof of a Firestone repair shop. Storms also damaged businesses and cars in a nearby strip mall, sending a large air conditioning unit that had been on the roof crashing to the parking lot, officials said.
No one was inside the repair shop, but at a nearby sports bar, employees were in the back cleaning up and restocking after the business had closed for the night when the thunderstorms rolled through, Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen told reporters later Wednesday morning.
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“We were blessed that no lives were lost,” Christensen said, adding that only minor injuries were reported.
Some of the damage in Katy had preliminarily been determined to have been caused by an EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds of around 90 mph (145 kph), National Weather Service meteorologist Bradley Brokamp said.
Photos posted on social media showed heavy damage to a church in Port Arthur, Texas, where city officials said they were also dealing with downed trees and powerlines.
In Mississippi, the sheriff sent out an urgent warning Wednesday to people in parts of Yazoo County, just northwest of Jackson, about a levee there.
In the county north of Jackson, the sheriff’s office called for the evacuation of one subdivision because of a potential levee failure. County officials continued to monitor the levee, WAPT-TV reported.
Herbert reported from Slidell. Associated Press journalists Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Jamie Stengle in Dallas; Michael Goldberg in Jackson, Mississippi; Juan Lozano in Houston; Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; and Julie Walker in New York contributed to this report.
