New Orleans – Eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina, Stella Chambers’ modest red-brick house had finally been repaired, and she was waiting for one last utility hookup to move back in.
But the 85-year-old woman never made it.
A tornado tore through the city’s Gentilly neighborhood before daybreak Tuesday, flattening her house, ripping apart the front-yard FEMA trailer in which she was living, and killing her.
At least 29 people were injured, including Chambers’ daughter, Gail, as the twister heaped more misery on neighborhoods still trying to recover from Katrina. The storm destroyed at least 50 FEMA trailers and dozens of homes and damaged many others – many of which were in various states of repair.
“We were trying to get my mother back in the house. Now there is nothing to repair,” said Mervin Pollard, whose 81-year-old mother’s Katrina-flooded home was reduced to a pile of lumber Tuesday. “How do you start over again when you are already trying to do that?”
Gov. Kathleen Blanco became teary-eyed as she talked to residents of the suburb of Westwego whose homes were destroyed.
“It’s incredible. It just looks like pickup sticks,” she said. “People’s lives just torn asunder again.”
Blanco issued a disaster declaration, making the area eligible for federal aid. She said the state would send in National Guard troops for security.
The tornado hopscotched a 10-mile path from the west bank of the Mississippi River to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, striking some neighborhoods that had been hard hit by Katrina and have been slow to recover.
In Gentilly, there are vast stretches of abandoned, gutted houses, dotted by trailers and occasional reoccupied dwellings.
Some abandoned houses collapsed in the twister’s winds.
Blood covered Gail Chambers’ face and was running down her side when she banged on the door for help at about 3:30 a.m., said neighbor Hellean Lewis.
“She was crying and screaming, ‘Help me! I can’t find my mother!”‘ Lewis said. Searchers found Stella Chambers crying for her daughter in the rubble. She died at a hospital, where her daughter was in stable condition.
There was no immediate estimate of the cost of the damage.
Some storm victims faced the prospect of once again having to find temporary shelter and do battle with insurance companies.
Kamal Namazi, 49, figured the storm did $175,000 in dents, broken windows and other damage to the 18 new and used cars on his lot in Westwego. The car lot was hit by a tornado in 2004. Katrina tore off the roof of his Metairie home and left a foot of water inside.
“Right now, I don’t want to live any more,” he said. “I don’t want to be in this world.”
