Day after hail bombardment, Jennings rocked by Monday storm

Cleanup continued Tuesday in Jennings after powerful storms blew trees and heavy branches down onto homes and vehicles and caused widespread power outages.

The storm comes a day after three-inch hail fell on the city.

“It’s never good for people to have damage,” Jennings Fire Chief Ashley Navarre said.

Navarre said crews spent Monday night surveying the damage, blocking off streets and helping clear roadways. A few streets remained blocked off Tuesday morning as crews worked to clear debris.

The southside of Jennings appeared the hardest hit with damage reported to several homes and vehicles, as well as trees, power lines and poles, but no injuries or fires were reported.

Eric Palfrey was inside his East Madison Street home when the storm hit just before 5:30 Monday.

“It was very noisy with a lot of high winds and torrential rain,” Palfrey said as he cleared debris from in front of his home Tuesday.

Palfrey said he went to his front door to look out and that’s when he heard a big boom and the power went out as a very large branch fell from his tree taking down the power lines. Several branches landed on the hood of his vehicle.

“There was nothing I could do,” he said. “I’m just happy that the tree didn’t fall on my house and I wasn’t injured.”

Farrell Jones was inside his Peterson Street home when the storm hit.

“It was kind of scary,” he said. “There were a lot of things hitting my house… going boom, boom against the house.”

Jones said he didn’t go outside until Tuesday morning when he found a lot of branches in his yard. Jones said he felt fortunate because there was worse damage in his neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of things torn up around here,” he said.

Ulysses Murchison spent the morning trying to clean large tree branches from the yard of his Shirley Drive residence.

“I was in the house and heard a few cracks and stuff flying around, then I came out after it was over and saw big branches everywhere,” he said.

Michael and Brenda Pete, who live across the street, were also busy cleaning their yard.

“This is worse than any hurricane we’ve had here,” Michael Pete said. “It was horrible. It tore up everything. We have parts of other people’s trees in our yard.”

Despite all the debris, Pete was blessed that he had no structural damage to his home or outside buildings.

His wife, Brenda said the storm sounded like something she did not want to see when it hit. She waited until the storm passed to look out.