Tornados Touch Down, Wreak Havoc in Southern Louisiana Near New Orleans

Tornadoes touched down in southern Louisiana Tuesday, wiping houses from their foundations and downing power lines a severe line of weather moving across the region.

At least three tornados have touched down — one in the eastern part of New Orleans, another near the town of Donaldsonville and another in the town of Killian, said Danielle Manning, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

They have heard reports of injuries but nothing that has been confirmed yet, she said.

Local media showed images of some severely damaged buildings in eastern New Orleans with power lines strewn across the road.

At least seven homes have been damaged, two of them completely destroyed, in Livingston Parish, northwest of New Orleans, said Brandi Janes, the deputy emergency preparedness director.

Janes said she knows of two injuries in the parish, both minor. She didn't immediately have any information on whether the homes that were destroyed were occupied when the storm struck.

They are working to get trees out of roadways and with the Red Cross to get help to damaged areas, she said.

The tornadoes are part of a wall of bad weather moving across the Deep South that lit up radar monitors and prompting multiple tornado warnings from Louisiana to Alabama as severe storms brought hail, high winds and twisters to the New Orleans area.

One of the warnings described a "large, extremely dangerous and potentially deadly" twister south of Hammond, Louisiana.

The national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said 2.7 million people in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would be at the highest risk of severe weather on Tuesday. In Louisiana, tornado watches covered New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In Mississippi, a tornado watch covered the southern half of the state. In Alabama, the city of Mobile was in the storm's path.