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New Orleans tornado kills 1, hurts 29

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 14, 2007

NEW ORLEANS - Eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina, Stella Chambers' modest red-brick house had finally been repaired, and she was waiting for one last utility hookup to move back in. But the 85-year-old woman never made it.

A tornado tore through her neighborhood in the city's Gentilly neighborhood before daybreak Tuesday, flattening her house, ripping apart the front-yard FEMA trailer in which she was living, and killing her.

At least 29 people were injured, including Chambers' daughter, Gail, as the twister heaped more misery on neighborhoods still trying to recover from Katrina. The storm destroyed at least 50 FEMA trailers and dozens of homes, and damaged many others - many of which were in various states of repair.

"We were trying to get my mother back in the house. Now there is nothing to repair," said Mervin Pollard, whose 81-year-old mother's Katrina-flooded home was reduced to a pile of lumber Tuesday. "How do you start over again when you are already trying to do that?"

Firefighters went door to door, once again searching for victims of a storm.

"Some of these houses still have the circle on them from the last search," resident Patrick Clementine said. "Now we're doing it again."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco became teary-eyed as she talked to residents of the suburb of Westwego whose homes were destroyed.

"It's incredible. It just looks like pickup sticks," she said. "People's lives just torn asunder again."

Blanco issued a disaster declaration, making the area eligible for aid. She said the state would send in National Guard troops for security.

The tornado hop-scotched a 10-mile path from the west bank of the Mississippi River to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, striking some neighborhoods that had been hard hit by Katrina and have been slow to recover.

In Gentilly, there are vast stretches of abandoned, gutted houses, dotted by trailers and occasional reoccupied dwellings. Some abandoned houses collapsed in the twister's winds.

There was no immediate estimate of the cost of the damage.

FEMA teams began inspecting neighborhoods and said it would provide hotel rooms and trailers for people whose FEMA trailers were unusable.

The American Red Cross said 90 people were in shelters late Monday afternoon.

[Last modified February 14, 2007, 00:51:12]