A tornado tore through parts of New Orleans and its suburbs Tuesday night, flipping cars, ripping roofs off homes and killing at least one person in a region that was pummeled by Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago. Parts of St. Bernard Parish, which borders New Orleans to the southeast, appeared to take the brunt of the weather's fury, and that is where the fatality occurred. St. Bernard Parish officials gave no details on how the person died; they said multiple other people were injured. Rescue workers were searching through the suburban parish for more people in need of assistance, according to Sheriff Jimmy Pohlmann. St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said the tornado caused widespread damage throughout the parish. Other tornadoes spawned by the same storm system had hit parts of Texas and Oklahoma, killing one person Monday and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage. In New Orleans, local television stations broadcast live images of the storm as it barreled across the region. The tornado appeared to start in a suburb and then move east across the Mississippi River into the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and parts of St. Bernard Parish — both of which were badly damaged by Katrina — before moving northeast. Many residents also suffered damage just last year when Hurricane Ida — a Category 4 hurricane — swept through the region. Stacey Mancuso’s family had just completed repairs to their home in the suburb of Arabi after Ida ripped off the roof and caused extensive water damage. Then the tornado Tuesday tore through their street. She huddled in the laundry room with her husband; two children, ages 16 and 11; and dogs as part of their new roof was lifted away by the wind. “We’re alive. That’s what I can say at this point. We still have four walls and part of a roof. I consider myself lucky,” said Mancuso. Still, the twister was the third time they’ve had major weather damage since Katrina in 2005. In Arabi, there was a strong smell of natural gas in the air as residents and rescue personnel stood in the street and surveyed the damage. Some houses were destroyed while pieces of debris hung from electrical wires and trees. An aluminum fishing boat in front of one house was bent into the shape of a C with the motor across the street. Power poles were down and leaning over, forcing emergency workers to walk slowly through darkened neighborhoods checking for damage. Michelle Malasovich lives in Arabi. Initially she had been worried about family that lives in areas north of Louisiana that were also getting hit by bad weather. She was texting with her family there when, she said, “All of a sudden the lights started flickering.” Her husband was out on the porch and saw the tornado coming. “It just kept getting louder and louder,” Malasovich said. After it passed, they came out to survey the damage. “Our neighbor’s house is in the middle of the street right now.” Malasovich’s house fared relatively well, she said. Some columns were blown off the porch and the windows of her Jeep were blown out. Down the street a house was severely damaged, and parked vehicles had been moved around by the winds: “This is serious for down here.” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted late Tuesday that there were no reports of casualties or significant damage to the city and that the power utility was working to restore electricity to the 8,000 customers impacted. Read: Myanmar denies genocide, again describes Rohingyas as 'Bengali community' About 13,000 homes and businesses were reportedly without power in the three parishes around New Orleans after the storm. While people in the metropolitan region are used to dealing with severe weather such as hurricanes or heavy rains, it’s rare that a tornado moves through the city. A 2017 tornado caused widespread damage when it touched down in the eastern part of the city. Ahead of the severe weather, many schools closed early or cancelled after-school activities in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Shelters opened for residents who needed a place to stay while the storms traveled through. Louisiana’s federal and state authorities reminded thousands of hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle trailers to have an evacuation plan because the structures might not withstand the expected weather. More than 8,000 households live in such temporary quarters, officials said. After leaving the New Orleans area, the system dumped heavy rain, downed trees and prompted multiple tornado warnings as it moved into Alabama Tuesday evening. The roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, after a storm preceded by tornado warnings passed through the area, the National Weather Service tweeted. Forecasters had been predicting a line of intense weather moving from Texas eastward into the Deep South, and Monday started out with some vicious weather in Texas. Read: Tropical storm Asani crosses Myanmar's delta region Several tornadoes were reported along the Interstate 35 corridor. In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal — uprooted by strong winds hung from the branches. Residents stepped carefully to avoid downed power lines as they worked to clean the remnants of broken ceilings, torn down walls and damaged cars. J.D. Harkins, 59, said he saw two tornadoes pass by his Elgin home. “There used to be a barn there,” Harkins said, pointing to an empty plot on his uncle’s property covered with scattered debris. He said the building was empty when the first tornado hit Monday, and that his family is thankful nobody was hurt. Homes and businesses in at least a dozen Texas counties were damaged, according to Storm Prediction Center reports. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a disaster declaration for 16 hard-hit counties. Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere. The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in the community of Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but provided no details.

Six people were killed Saturday when a tornado swept through central Iowa, damaging buildings and knocking down trees and power lines, authorities said. Emergency management officials in Madison County said four were injured in addition to those killed when the tornado touched down in the area southwest of Des Moines at about 4:30 p.m. Among those killed were children and adults. Madison County Emergency Management Director Diogenes Ayala said 25 to 30 homes were badly damaged by the tornado. “This is the worst anyone has seen in a very long time," he said. Officials didn't identify those killed but said they were not all in the same location. Wendy Burkett told the Des Moines Register she and two of her three daughters were in their house Saturday afternoon when her husband, Tony, called her from a nearby shed where he was working and alerted her about a tornado warning. READ: Kentucky's death toll from tornadoes rises to 77 Burkett said she came outside and joined him in front of the house, looking down their driveway toward the southwest. “And then we saw it. The tornado,” she said. “There was debris flying around and it was getting louder and louder.” They hurried with their daughters to their basement as the tornado roared by within seconds. As they clung to each other, a window shattered outwards and water began spewing from the pipes, she said. But within about a minute, the tornado passed by, and while the family was unhurt, their home was in ruins amid debris all around, even in the trees. The National Weather Service in Des Moines tweeted later Saturday that initial photos and videos from the damage around the community of Winterset suggested it was at least an EF-3 tornado, capable of causing severe damage, on the Enhanced Fujita scale. It said weather service teams would investigate the damage Sunday and further assess a potential rating. Thunderstorms that spawned tornadoes moved through much of Iowa from the afternoon until Saturday night with storms also causing damage in the Des Moines suburb of Norwalk, areas just east of Des Moines and other areas of eastern Iowa. READ: Tornado, storm death toll at 90 after Ky teen's body found Officials reported a number of homes were damaged, roads were blocked by downed lines and tree branches were shredded by the strong winds. Photos tweeted on social media showed downed trees, debris and damaged roofs and vehicles. At one point, power outages affected about 10,000 in the Des Moines area.

A Kentucky neighborhood ravaged by a tornado by got more bad news Thursday: the body of a missing teenager was found. Nyssa Brown was the seventh member of her family to die in the tornado that hit Bowling Green last week. Warren County coroner Kevin Kirby said the 13-year-old's body was found Thursday morning in a wooded area near her subdivision. The girl’s parents, three siblings ranging in age from 4 to 16, and a grandmother also died in the tornado. Also read: On a single Kentucky street, the tornado killed 7 children According to Kirby, eight children were among the 12 victims who died on a single street, Moss Creek Avenue. Also among the dozen were five relatives from another family. Overall, there were 17 storm-related fatalities in Warren County, Kirby said. The teen's death pushed the total of storm-related casualties in five states to 90, including 76 in Kentucky. Also read: 8 factory workers dead, 8 missing from US tornado: Spokesman

The little red wagon was strewn upside down on a heap of rubble — a pile of boards and bricks, a mangled blue bicycle, a baby doll. Behind it, there was little more than a hole in the ground where a house had stood. Across the street, the tidy homes on this cul-de-sac were reduced to mounds of lumber. Clothes hung from the branches of snapped trees. The walls of one house were gone, and the only thing left standing inside was a white Christmas tree. When a tornado touched down in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the middle of the night, its violence was centered on this friendly subdivision, where everyone waved at one another and giggling children spent afternoons tooling around on bicycles on the sidewalks. Fourteen people died in a few blocks, 11 of them on a single street, Moss Creek Avenue. Entire families were lost, among them seven children, two of them infants. Neighbors who survived are so stricken with grief they struggle to speak of it. All around them, amid the ruins, is evidence of the kids they used to watch climb off the school bus. Read: Thousands without heat, water after tornadoes kill dozens Melinda Allen-Ray has barely slept since early Saturday, when tornado alerts started screaming and she carried her grandchildren into the bathroom as winds whipped her house apart. After just minutes of destruction, there was silence. She went outside and heard her neighbors’ screams. “I heard them — it traumatized me. I think about that each night when I go to sleep, when I do sleep,” she said. In her dreams she hears the screaming and wakes up. She wept all weekend. “I just think about all those babies,” she said. Hers is a diverse community of families from around the world — Bosnia, Myanmar, Nigeria — many of whom fled from violence. For some, this fresh destruction triggers thoughts of the dark days they fled in their homelands, where they hid from bombs and lost whole families. “We come from war; this reminds us, it touches the memory of that, where we’ve been and how we came here,” said Ganimete Ademi, a 46-year-old grandmother who fled Kosovo in 1999 during the war, in which she lost her uncle and a nephew. Now she looks around her own neighborhood. “I turn my memory back to 22 years ago,” she said. One of the families that lost many members was from Bosnia. Two brothers lived in homes next door to each other with their families, Ademi said. They were happy and gregarious, holding summertime parties in the yard. From the two brothers’ households, one woman died, along with two children and two infants, police said. Their surviving relatives said it’s too difficult to speak of it. Another family here lost six members: three adults, a 16-year-old girl, a 4-year-old boy and another child. Around the corner, a 77-year-old grandmother was killed. Two others from the neighborhood died of their injuries at the hospital. “That’s hard to think about — you go to bed, and your entire family is gone the next day,” said Ronnie Ward, with the Bowling Green Police Department. They usually tell people to get in a bathtub and cover up with a mattress, he said, but that probably would’ve made little difference here: Some homes were destroyed so completely the tornado ripped all they way through the floor, exposing the earth below. Read: 8 factory workers dead, 8 missing from US tornado: Spokesman Now, they comb through what remains, turning over every strip of dry wall and each twisted car to make sure there aren’t more victims underneath. It can be horrific work, Ward said, but they try to steady themselves enough because they know it must be done. “So you go about that task of trying to get this work done, and then you come across a wagon,” he said, standing near the Radio Flyer bent and broken on a pile. “And you think, that’s associated with a child somewhere. And did that child live? Those thoughts, they overtake you, they overwhelm you.” What these children left consumes them. There’s a Barbie doll missing a leg. A reindeer stuffed animal. A scooter, a toy horse, a hula hoop. There’s a pink Disney princess backpack. A car from “Paw Patrol,” and bedding printed with the faces of its goofy animal first responders. The people who’ve had to see it are reckoning with how close they and their own children came. As the tornado tore through the subdivision, it decimated some houses and damaged others, yet left some just next door unscathed. “It’s almost hard to look at, because how did it miss that house but it got this house?” Ward said. A tree shot through the neighborhood like a missile and landed in Ademi’s backyard, about a dozen feet from where she’d cowered with her husband. Her four children and two grandchildren live nearby. “This tree could have come in my house, and we’d all be gone too,” she said. The tornado turned just as it got to Benedict Awm’s house. Inside, he, his wife, their 2-year-old son and infant held one another under a blanket to protect their eyes and bodies from the broken glass shooting through shattered windows. His wife shook and asked if they would die. He said he didn’t know. “It’s terrible, you can’t imagine, I thought we were dead,” he said. Had the tornado kept on its course, they would be, he thinks. But instead it turned slightly. Thunderous winds turned to silence, and their house still stood. A miracle, thinks Awm, who moved here from war-torn Burma. Around the corner, someone spray-painted on their front door the words “By God’s grace we survived,” and hung an American flag from the wreckage of their rafters. For days now, volunteers have arrived from all over with trucks and tools, and there’s comfort in that. “Sometimes it makes me want to cry, to see how people are willing to help me,” Awm said. Ben Cerimovic pulled his truck and trailer in every day over the weekend. He’s an immigrant from Bosnia, and he knows the family that died here. “The feelings I’m having right now I really can’t explain,” he said. There’s a close-knit, thriving Bosnian community in Bowling Green, which has a robust refugee resettlement program to bring migrants to Western Kentucky. Most of them came here from war so their children would have a better life, he said. Now this subdivision looks like a war zone, scattered with things their children loved. Cerimovic volunteered Saturday and Sunday, but he had to take Monday off to gather his emotions. “Every time I see this, and I hear about those kids, I think about mine,” he said. “What if they were my kids?”

A stunned US East Coast faced a rising death toll, surging rivers and tornado damage Thursday after the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain, drowning at least 46 people in their homes and cars. In a region that had been warned about potentially deadly flash flooding but hadn’t braced for such a blow from the no-longer-hurricane, the storm killed people from Maryland to Connecticut on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. At least 23 people died in New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said. At least 13 people were killed in New York City, police said, 11 of them in flooded basement apartments, which often serve as relatively affordable homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. Suburban Westchester County reported three deaths. Also read: Ida remnants pound Northeast with rain, flooding, tornadoes Officials said at least five people died in Pennsylvania, including one killed by a falling tree and another who drowned in his car after helping his wife to escape. A Connecticut state police sergeant, Brian Mohl, perished after his cruiser was swept away. Another death was reported in Maryland. Sophy Liu said she tried using towels and garbage bags to stop the water coming into her first-floor New York City apartment, but the flood rose to her chest in just a half hour. She roused her son from bed, put him in a life jacket and inflatable swimming ring and tried to flee, but the door stuck. She called two friends who helped her jar it loose. “I was obviously scared, but I had to be strong for my son. I had to calm him down,” she recalled Thursday as medical examiners removed three bodies from a home down her Queens street. In another part of Queens, water rapidly filled Deborah Torres’ first-floor apartment to her knees as her landlord frantically urged her neighbors below — among them a toddler — to get out, she said. But the water rushed in so strongly that she surmised they weren’t able to open the door. The three residents died. “I have no words,” she said. “How can something like this happen?” Ida’s soggy remnants merged with a storm front and soaked the Interstate 95 corridor, meteorologists said. Similar weather has followed hurricanes before, but experts said it was slightly exacerbated by climate change — warmer air holds more rain — and urban settings, where expansive pavement prevents water from seeping into the ground. Also read: Ida collapses Mississippi road; kills 2, injures at least 10 The National Hurricane Center had warned since Tuesday of the potential for “significant and life-threatening flash flooding” and major river flooding in the mid-Atlantic region and New England. Still, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the storm’s strength took them by surprise. “We did not know that between 8:50 and 9:50 p.m. last night, that the heavens would literally open up and bring Niagara Falls level of water to the streets of New York,” said Hochul, a Democrat who became governor last week after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned. De Blasio, also a Democrat, said he’d gotten a forecast Wednesday of 3 to 6 inches (7.5 to 15 cm) of rain for the day. The city’s Central Park ended up getting 3.15 inches in just one hour, surpassing the previous one-hour high of 1.94 inches (5 cm) during Tropical Storm Henri on Aug. 21. Wednesday’s storm ultimately dumped over 9 inches (23 cm) of rain in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and nearly as much on New York City’s Staten Island. In Washington, President Joe Biden assured Northeast residents that federal first responders were on the ground to help clean up. In New York, nearly 500 vehicles were abandoned on flooded highways, garbage bobbed in streaming streets and water cascaded into the city’s subway tunnels, trapping at least 17 trains and disrupting service all day. Videos online showed riders standing on seats in swamped cars. All were safely evacuated, with police aiding 835 riders and scores of people elsewhere, including a 94-year-old man on a highway, Chief of Department Rodney Harrison said. At one Queens development, neighbors unsuccessfully tried for an hour to save a 48-year-old woman after water broke through the glass patio door of her basement apartment, trapping her in 6 feet (2 meters) of water. “She was screaming, ‘Help me, help me, help me!’ We all came to her aid, trying to get her out,” said the building’s assistant superintendent, Jayson Jordan, but “the thrust of the water was so strong.” Also read: Thousands face weeks without power in Ida’s aftermath Residents said they have complained for years about flooding on another Queens street, where a woman and her 22-year-old son died in a basement apartment. Her husband and the couple’s other son were spared only because they stepped out to move a car, next-door neighbor Lisa Singh said.   “No one should have to go this way. I feel like this was 100% avoidable,” she said.   Police were still going door-to-door in flooded areas Thursday evening and didn’t have a firm number of unaccounted-for people, Harrison said.   In Elizabeth, New Jersey, rain and river flooding in an apartment complex killed four people and forced 600 from their homes, Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said.   Greg Turner, who lives elsewhere in the northern New Jersey city, said his 87-year-old mother started calling 911 when water began rising in her apartment at 8 p.m. He and his brother couldn’t get there because of the deluge.   As midnight approached, the water reached her neck, he said. Rescuers finally cut through the floor of the apartment above and pulled her to safety.   “She lost everything,” Turner said as he headed to a bank for money to buy his mother clothes and shoes.   In New Jersey’s Milford Borough, authorities said they found a man’s body in a car buried up to its hood in dirt and rocks.   The National Weather Service said the ferocious storm also spawned at least 10 tornadoes from Maryland to Massachusetts, including a 150-mph (241 kph) twister that splintered homes and toppled silos in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, south of Philadelphia.   “It just came through and ripped,” said resident Jeanine Zubrzycki, 33, who hid in her basement with her three children as their house shook and lights flickered.   “And then you could just hear people crying,” said Zubrzycki, 33, whose home was damaged but livable.   Record flooding along the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania inundated homes, highways and commercial buildings, even as meteorologists warned that rivers likely won’t crest for a few more days. The riverside community of Manayunk remained largely under water.   The Schuyilkill reached levels not seen in over 100 years in Philadelphia, where firefighters were still getting calls about minor building collapses and people stuck in flooded cars Thursday morning. The managers of a 941-unit apartment complex near the river ordered residents to evacuate, citing “deteriorating” conditions after water rushed into the parking garage and pool areas.   In suburban Bucks County, several firefighters had to be rescued after floodwaters pinned a rescue boat against a bridge pier, state emergency management director Randy Padfield said.   Others were unable to escape the floods, including Donald Bauer, who was driving home to Perkiomenville with his wife after attending their daughter’s volleyball game at DeSales University, near Allentown.   Their SUV stalled in the water and floated into a house, breaking the back window, said Darby Bauer, who was on the phone with his parents when the engine died. Donald Bauer helped his wife, Katherine, escape out the broken window and urged her to go, their son said.   She clung to a tree and watched the rising waters carry the SUV out of sight, he said. She was rescued about an hour later and hospitalized.   Donald Bauer, a 65-year-old retired school bus driver, “had one of the biggest hearts we knew,” his son said. “He was selfless down to his last act.”   Authorities used boats to rescue people in places from North Kingstown, Rhode Island, to Frederick County, Maryland, where 10 children and a driver were pulled from a school bus.   On Sunday, Ida struck Louisiana as the fifth-strongest storm to ever hit the U.S. mainland, leaving 1 million people without power, maybe for weeks.

Cyclone preparedness is now essential as several cyclones have hit over the past decade. To increase the severity of ongoing coronavirus, it is as if cyclone ‘Yaas’ is coming towards Bangladesh. It originates from the North Andaman Sea and the adjoining East-Central Bay of Bengal under the Indian Ocean. The depression formed here could continue to intensify and turn into a severe cyclone by May 24. It may then move northwest and reach the Khulna coast of Bangladesh on 26 May.  Let’s take a look at the necessary steps that need to be taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by the cyclone. Necessary preparations to deal with cyclone. The pre-cyclone initiatives In the case of rural areas 1. When building a house, make sure that it is as high as possible above the ground. Lay iron or wooden pillars and frames on a strong foundation. Then cover it with a thatch. Be careful when using tin in tents as tin can fly during storms and injure people and cattle. In this case, you can use Tin with a thickness of 0.5 mm and Zehuk.  2. With the storm in mind, plant coconut, banana, bamboo, palm, firewood, and other hardy plants in the yard.  3. Keep radios on all vessels including fishing boats, launches, and trawlers. Make it a habit to listen to the weather forecast all the time while staying in the river or sea.  4. During the cyclone season, keep dry food such as parched rice, flattened rice, biscuits, etc. that can be stored at home for a few days. 5. People in which area will go to which shelter, where the cattle will be, fixed everything in advance during the cyclone. Make sure you know all the safe places near and far as possible. Don’t forget about social distance due to corona. The shelter-providing organizations have to keep in mind that people gather at a sufficient distance from each shelter.  6. Always carry some first aid kits such as bandages, Dettol, etc. with you if possible.  7. When going to a shelter, decide in advance what to take with you and what to bury in the ground. You can leave the essential commodities such as rice, lentils, matches, dried wood, water alum, sugar, regularly used medicines, books, bandages, cotton, orsaline, documents, money, etc. packed in waterproof polythene bags and buried in the ground. 8. Check the condition of your houses as soon as you get a cyclone warning. To make it stronger, bury a pole in the ground and tie different parts of the house with ropes.  9. Get in touch with CPP (Cyclone Preparedness Program) volunteers as soon as you receive the signal. 10. You must put out the fire before leaving the house.  11. Open the head of the tubewell. Then cover the open part well with polythene. This will prevent dirt from entering the tubewell.  12. Rainwater is pure and edible. So make arrangements in advance to retain rainwater after the cyclone. Keep water in a large earthen pot or drum and cover its mouth well so that no insects or dirt can enter.   Also Read: How Cyclone Yaas was named In the case of urban areas  1. Don’t be alarmed by the news of the cyclone on online social media, TV, and radio. Listen to the instructions calmly and act accordingly.  2. Keep your power bank, charger light, torchlight fully charged. Keep candles and lighters with yourself. 3. If your home is a tin shed or if you live downstairs, wrap important papers in waterproof boxes with tape and polythene. Don’t put multiplugs on the floor.  4. Gas, electricity, water, and phone networks across the city may be shut down for security reasons. The road may be closed. So keep a sufficient amount of dry food in the collection. 5. Remove flower tubs on the railing, outside machinery of AC on the sunshade, construction equipment, and keep them in a safe place. If you have a building under construction next to your home, you need to be extra careful.  Also Read: Cyclone Yaas: Maritime ports in Bangladesh asked to hoist signal no 2

Sirens screamed. Emergency weather alerts buzzed cellphones. News crews pleaded with people to seek cover.

Deadly tornadoes knocked out polling places in Tennessee, fears over the coronavirus left some precincts in California and Texas short of election workers, and overwhelmed voting systems led to long lines in Los Angeles as Super Tuesday sent voters surging to the polls in 14 states.

Dallas, Oct 21 (AP/UNB) — Crews searched Monday through the rubble of homes and businesses torn apart by a tornado that ripped through the Dallas area the night before, and one person was killed by a falling tree in Arkansas as the storms moved to the northeast.