A previous version of this article described the woman as a teenager. She is 21. The article and headline have been updated.
When a tornado touched down Tuesday night in Arabi, La., the growl of the twister and swirl of flying debris didn’t last more than 15 seconds.
And then there was quiet.
“Within a split second there was nothing,” Chuck Heirsch, a resident since 2003, told The Washington Post.
Heirsch, 58, assessed the damage of his home before walking out to check on his neighbors. He could not believe what he was seeing.
“When I opened the [front door], the neighbor’s house is in the street,” said Heirsch, a truck driver who first recounted the story to the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.
The tornado that struck the east side of New Orleans that evening left thousands without power and at least one dead. It was strong enough that it rocked the foundation of Heirsch’s neighbors’ house and sent it flying toward the middle of Prosperity Street.
His neighbors, a woman identified by the Associated Press as Dea Castellanos and her husband, had made it out of the house unscathed, but their daughter, who uses a wheelchair and was connected to a ventilator that night, was still trapped inside the house, Heirsch said. Castellanos’s daughter, who has muscular dystrophy, wound up trapped in her bedroom yelling for help, the AP reported.
A family friend who did not wish to be named told The Washington Post that the couple’s daughter is 21.
“I refer to the whole situation as the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ like she’s Dorothy,” the woman told The Post. “Because it lifted the home off the ground and dropped it in the middle of the street.”
Castellanos told the AP through an interpreter that as the tornado hit the ground, she felt the house spinning before it tossed the one-story home about 30 feet from its lot, leaving it in the middle of the street.
“The wife was screaming frantically,” Heirsch told The Post. The husband had a flashlight, he added, and was “disoriented and screaming.”
Quickly, other neighbors came out to help the couple. Heirsch said he called 911 to ask for an ambulance and also contacted the fire department and the energy company. The pressure of the tornado had ruptured the home’s gas pipe, which made a loud whistling sound, and Heirsch worried the house could catch fire with the couple’s daughter inside.
Not even the 911 dispatcher could believe what he described, Heirsch said.
“It’s in the middle of the street?” Heirsch recounted the dispatcher shouting on the other side of the line.
“Yes ma’am,” an exasperated Heirsch replied. “Do you want to come in and check?”
Within minutes, firefighters arrived.
About 20 minutes after that, Heirsch said, the energy company arrived and ordered everyone to stay away from the home as a crew of firefighters, and some neighbors, entered and dug the young woman out from the debris. They disconnected her from the ventilator, placed her on a gurney and walked her to the ambulance.
She was transported to the hospital, where she underwent surgery, Heirsch said. As of late Wednesday, Heirsch said he was told she was in stable condition.
Castellanos did not immediately reply to a message from The Post. Parish President Guy McInnis told the AP that the woman was “doing fine.”
In an email, Charlie Licciardi, interim fire chief of the St. Bernard Parish Fire Department, commended firefighters “who immediately after that rescue continued working throughout the night.”
The morning after the tornado, the family, who is from Honduras, came back to check what was left of their property. A group of neighbors, including Heirsch, handed them trash bags and tote bags for them to recover as many of their belongings as possible before heading back to the hospital to be with their daughter.
“That house is totaled,” Heirsch said. “One side of the house is completely missing.”
Heirsch said he is storing some of the family’s belongings in his garage and on his patio. Heirsch, who rebuilt his house after Hurricane Katrina nearly 17 years ago, said severe weather and natural disasters are just a part of living in the New Orleans area.
“I’ve been through hurricanes, floods and everything,” he said. “ … It doesn’t faze me anymore. … If you let it get to you, you’d be sitting in a corner crying for the rest of your life.”