A girl who relied on a breathing machine survived after her Louisiana home was uprooted and tossed into the middle of a nearby street by a tornado.
The twister barreled through suburban areas on the outskirts of New Orleans on Tuesday, leaving one person confirmed dead and thousands still without electricity.
At one point during the storm the tornado plucked a house from its foundations and hurled it onto a nearby street with the family still inside.
After the house fell and collapsed, a couple climbed from the wreckage but were frantically searching for their daughter, who was hooked up to a breathing machine.
One neighbor described their plight to the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.
"They were screaming. His wife was hysterical. They were already traumatized from taking that Wizard of Oz ride," Chuck Heirsch told the paper.
Nerissa Ledet, another neighbor, said that other residents rushed to the house to help the family dig for their daughter.
"All the men in the neighborhood ran to the house. The mother, they brought her to me. I just held her," she told the paper. "I tried to console her. I said, `You know they´re going to get her out.´"
After a short time firefighters arrived and carried the girl out in a blanket. She is reportedly in the hospital and is "doing fine."
Another family said they hid under mattresses with their 6 and 8 year-old children to protect themselves as the tornado sped by. While their home was largely left intact, the high winds blew out the windows, covering the interior of their house with glass.
Damarys Olea told CNN that she noticed the pressure as the tornado approached, saying she felt as though she had blacked out when it was close.
“We felt the pressure, and it was scary. It was like being in a movie,” Ms Olea said. “The wind, the pressure, the noise, the house shaking … it just felt like a train was going by.”
The twister, which damaged large portions of St Bernard Parish, injured seven other people and tore the roofs off of houses and flipped vehicles.
Wood, metal, and downed power lines littered the yards of homes for an approximately two-mile stretch through the parish.
Parish President Guy McInnis told CNN that there are streets in the area where all of the homes were leveled.
He said it was a "miracle" that more people were hurt or killed.
The tornado hit the area just before 8pm on Tuesday, tearing through some of the same spots that were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Workers continued cleanup operations on Wednesday.
“We’ve been through this, it seems, like a gazillion times, but we are good at it, and we’re going to get started this morning,” Mr McInnis said.
