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A young girl with muscular dystrophy miraculously survived after a tornado tore through her suburban New Orleans neighborhood. The girl and her parents were inside when the tornado lifted their home off of its cinderblock piers and dropped it in the middle of the street.
Dea Castellanos told the Associated Press that her house made a full rotation before it landed in the road about 30 feet away.
Castellanos and her husband managed to crawl out of their home and began desperately shouting for help because their daughter was still trapped inside. The young girl requires a motorized wheelchair to get around and is also on a respirator.
"I saw the house, and I saw my neighbor trying to get his daughter out of there," neighbor Chuck Heirsch told the New Orleans Advocate. "They were screaming. His wife was hysterical. They were already traumatized from taking that 'Wizard of Oz' ride."
Neighbors rushed out of their homes to help. With the help of firefighters, they managed to find the girl and carried her to safety, wrapped in a blanket. She was taken to the hospital and is doing fine.
"All the men in the neighborhood ran to the house. The mother, they brought her to me. I just held her," Nerissa Ledet told the Advocate. "I tried to console her. I said, 'You know they're going to get her out.'"