Tornado kills woman who ignores shelter-in-place order

This radio station WWL alert (New Orleans), sent hours ago, was waiting for me in my e-mail when I got home tonight:

The National Weather Service has dropped severe weather watches and warnings for the New Orleans metro area, but not before at least four tornadoes touched down south and west of the city Tuesday afternoon, causing damage and at least one fatality.

It appears the most serious incident of severe weather occurred in Independence, Tangipahoa Parish, where a woman was killed outside Lallie Kemp Hospital.

Hospital officials say the victim, identified as a 51-year-old woman, defied a shelter-in-place order and was sucked into a funnel cloud as she exited the building. Officials say other buildings on the hospital campus were damaged.

Emergency management officials confirm tornadoes touched down in Terrytown and Myrtle Grove on the Westbank of Jefferson Parish, and in Montz, St. Charles Parish. In all three cases, there were no reports of injuries, but at least one building in the 200 block of Wright Avenue in Terrytown was damaged.

There were also several reports of funnel clouds that did not touch the ground, including one at the intersection of Causeway and Veterans Boulevard in Metairie.

Immediately following the storms, some 30,000 people lost power. Entergy reported 9,000 outages, mostly in New Orleans East. There were 9,000 outages reported by the Washington/St. Tammany Electric Cooperative, and scattered outages reported by CLECO in Slidell, Mandeville, Madisonville and Covington.

Eyewitnesses also reported the facade of the former Texaco building at Canal and LaSalle Streets was torn off by high winds. New Orleans Police blocked off part of Canal Street to keep pedestrians and traffic out of danger.

As you requested, WWL 870am is keeping you up to date.

WWL, 1450 Poydras Street, Suite 500, New Orleans, LA 70112

 

I remember the old Chiffon commercial: you don't fool around with Mother Nature.

Sadly, there are people who will never adhere to that lesson: keep your ass where you are at during a severe storm.

 

What is wrong with people?

 

Before we get all blame-the-victim here, do we know what the deal was with this woman? Was she an Alzheimer's patient? A staffer sneaking out for a smoke?

 

Whatever.

 

Was it a regular hospital, because if not, that would be pretty sad if it was a mentally ill institution.

 

I don't need to tell you this, J_D, but Tangipahoa is north and west of NOLA, not south and west. WWL may need to work on its geography a little.

 

Someone in New Orleans defied a weather warning, not to mention common sense? That never happens.

 

I don't know the specifics of this case, but, unfortunately, we'll always have idiots who think an approaching hurricane is a perfect time to go surfing, who think that water on the roadway can't be that deep, etc. Then we put others at risk trying to save 'em. Why is it that people think of the worst possible times to exercise no common sense?

 

A week after I first moved to town, a hurricane hit. Cat 1 by the time it hit this far inland.
And one of the TV stations had footage of a guy who thought it would be great fun to paddle around in a swollen creek in an inflatable raft, which wasn't fully inflated.
In and of itself, no big deal. If the guy is that fucking dumb, he deserved to be swept away.
It was the fact he had his maybe 5-year-old son in the raft with him that was cause for concern.

City's cops came and got him -- along with a nice big fine.