NEW ORLEANS– Like so many in Algiers Point, Mike Wolanski took cover from the overnight storms.
“The wind outside my window sounded like a train coming through. I grabbed my dogs, yelled to my wife to get the other dogs, and to go under the stairs,” he said.
Wolanski said, “It was just so powerful and fast and you didn’t even have time to think.”
Now neighbors are picking up the pieces, as Entergy crews work to restore power to thousands and city crews work to remove all the knocked down trees like a giant one that fell onto cars on Bouny Street and Pelican Avenue in Algiers.
“They are going to remove that tree off the property and that house will have a hole in the roof and it will look like the cars you see damaged underneath,” Daniel Steinspring with Cypress Roofing said.
Around the neighborhood along Opelousas Avenue you can see trees down, cars crushed, transformer poles down on many streets.
Then on Howard Avenue at the Kentwood Water building, their roof was ripped off.
“You can’t make it up. It is real. Be responsible. Be patient as we move through these challenging times. We are seeing a frequency of weather patterns and we are seeing them being more aggressive,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
For neighbors like Mike, the destructive weather shocked him.
“I’ve been through the last hurricane. The eye came over my house, and this was worse,” Wolanski said.