Iberia Parish officials are assessing damage after a tornado hit their parish, damaging one of the parish's two major hospitals in the process.
That tornado touched down just before 11 a.m. According to Richard, the tornado passed near Avery Island and the Port of Iberia before moving inland. He says the tornado didn't cause any damage until it push into New Iberia.
"We have some areas in Iberia Parish that have been hit pretty hard," Iberia Parish President M. Larry Richard told WWL. "We have mobile homes flipped over and destroyed. We have about 1,800 (electricity) customers that are out of power. The affected area where we have outages are Darnall Road and Admiral Doyle and Neco Town Road and Nelson Canal. The crews are out assessing all of the damage right now and are working to restore it as quickly as they possibly can.
"We have trees down. We have power lines down. We just have some damage."
The includes significant damage at Iberia Medical Center, just inside the city limits parish seat New Iberia.
"We have some serious damage at the hospital," Richard said. "We have windows blown out. We have cars overturned. We have some serious damage in some areas of the hospital."
Richard says as of now, no patients were injured in the storm, nor have any been moved out of the hospital.
"I am in communication with Dionne Viator, the CEO of the hospital, but she did not tell me anything like that," Richard said.
Richard says he has received reports of the tornado hitting the community of Morbihan and of it passing near the village of Loreauville. He said he could not confirm if any homes or property there had been damaged because he was still making his way to those areas.
Richard did say he's received reports of a few injuries, but he said no one died in the Iberia tornado.
"I did speak to the governor earlier. We have been in contact. We have things moving along. We have all the things that we need. We have a shelter if we need a shelter for people. But we don't have any deaths or anything like that reported right now."
Eyewitness video showed the tornado crossing a highway, as drivers tried to get away from it.
