Since early Tuesday, there have been 53 tornado reports in seven states, including three confirmed whirlwinds in Louisiana that killed three people.
Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida have all reported. There have been 20 confirmed cases so far, with one in Oklahoma, one in Mississippi, four in Louisiana, and 14 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Residents or law enforcement personnel who witness tornadoes or areas of devastation typically file a report. If it is determined that a tornado did touch down, the National Weather Service dispatches teams to inspect the damage and assign a wind speed.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards assessed the wreckage in Iberia Parish on Thursday, where 13 people were hospitalized. Only one person required hospitalization. At a press conference, he stated that no deaths had been reported.
“This has been a very difficult couple of days for our state,” Edwards said, noting that tornadoes were “spread all over the state.”
Allison Alexander, who was discovered dead outside her home in St. Charles Parish, as well as Nikolus Little, 8, and his mother, Yoshiko Smith, were killed in the state. According to the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office, the mother and boy were killed when a storm demolished their Keithville house. Nikolus was discovered dead in the woods, and his mother’s body was discovered hours later beneath a pile of debris.
The news of the fatalities, according to Edwards, was “extremely tragic.”
According to St. Charles Parish President Matthew Jewell, 55 structures were destroyed, with 21 of them declared unusable.
“Our focus now is to ensure that our residents have exactly what they need for the cleanup process,” he said at a press conference Thursday afternoon.
The National Weather Service continued to examine the damage in Oklahoma and Texas on Thursday. According to KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, a family’s home in Wayne, roughly 50 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, was destroyed.
According to Justina Reaves, her sister and her sister’s family lived in the house and took refuge in the basement.
“They were in the basement, and then she said on the phone, ‘I think our house is getting hit,'” Reaves said. “I said, ‘Just stay put, it’s not over,’ and then she screamed out ‘Our house is hit,’ and then the phone went dead.”
Reaves stated that her husband assisted her in digging them out of the basement. Nobody in the family was hurt.
A Sam’s Club and the Grapevine Mills Mall in Texas were destroyed Tuesday after a tornado hit Grapevine, roughly 25 miles from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There were five people were injured.
