Mother describes tornado that picked up home, family inside

Arabi, Louisiana — The tornado that ripped through a New Orleans suburb lifted one house into the air and dropped it onto the middle of a street with a family inside.

Neighbors said the parents of a girl climbed out of the wreckage screaming frantically for help. Their daughter, who was on a breathing machine, was trapped in the house.

On Wednesday, as she tried to salvage items from the one-story house that had been moved 30 feet by the storm, mother Dea Castellanos described to The Associated Press through a translator how she heard rain and wind outside while she was sitting on her living room couch Tuesday.

More: Louisiana sends National Guard to tornado disaster area

The next thing she knew, Castellanos said, she could feel the house spin through a full rotation and she ended up in a bedroom.

When the family was finally able to emerge, Castellanos noticed that her house was in the street. Her daughter, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, was stuck in her bedroom, calling for her mother.

“They were screaming. His wife was hysterical,” neighbor Chuck Heirsch, who called 911, told The Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate when he saw his neighbors trying to get to their daughter. “They were already traumatized from taking that ‘Wizard of Oz’ ride.”

The rest passed like a blur, Castellanos said. An ambulance came to take her daughter to the hospital, where she was operated on overnight and is now all right, she said. Describing the rescue, St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said the hospitalized girl was “doing fine.”

Friends and relatives helped Castellanos clean out what belongings could be saved from inside the shattered home, like clothes and mementos, on Wednesday. One of the birds Castellanos kept as pets was standing on the floor, scattered debris all around.

Castellanos said she was thankful for everyone who had come to help with the cleanup, bringing food, garbage bags and work gloves.