Major Damage Reported After Large Tornado Hits New Orleans

A major tornado has left considerable damage around New Orleans, leaving thousands of residents in the dark on Tuesday (March 22) and homes destroyed, WVUE reports.

The National Weather Service confirmed that a "large and extremely dangerous" tornado was reported over Arabi around 7:30 p.m., leaving behind a path of destruction in New Orleans East. As of 9:30 p.m., more than 16,000 Entergy Louisiana customers were affected by outages. According to the WWLTV, 4,000 customers in St. Bernard were experiencing outages while all of Arabi and some of Chamette were still without power.

Residents around the city shared looks of some of the damage left behind, including a video of a rare multi-vortex tornado crossing the Lower Ninth Ward, which was shared to WVUE and can be seen here. The National Weather Service also shared a video of a large tornado cutting a path through the city.

According to St. Bernard Parish President Guy McGinnis, there were no immediate reports of injuries. Responders are currently searching the area and leading rescue efforts, per CNN.

"We have widespread damage from South Arabi to North Arabi," said McGinnis. "We're going through homes, search and rescue and clearing homes. We have some homes in South Arabi that we're trying to get to, we're getting calls from people saying they're trapped, but as of right now, there are no major injuries reported."