DeWitt's Fruit and Vegetable Shed on River Road Obliterated by Tornado

The DeWitt Fruit and Vegetable Shed has been located at the corner of Iris Avenue and River Road in Old Jefferson for 50+ years. The bad weather of early Thursday morning spun a tornado that decimated the fruit stand, a raised wooden house next to the stand, and a concrete-block constructed restoration workshop. I stopped by DeWitt's on Friday afternoon and was able to talk to one of the family members of the owners. He was extremely choked up but vowed a return to the location--even if have to sell their fruit and vegetables from a parked truck on the site. He also said that the resident of the adjacent wood frame house was within the house during the tornado and that man described the sound of the tornado as "a coming freight train." Despite his house getting ripped apart, the man amazingly received no injuries.

DeWitt's survived KTMB, but gets destroyed by a freak tornado. Logical, right? As Ashley comments in the initial tornado post, apparently locusts are "on deck" for New Orleans.

Oh, and get this--I have some friends whose Uptown home got about three feet of water in the flooding . . . Well, guess where their non-flooded stuff was moved to? Yep, that self-storage facility on Jefferson Highway which also sat in the path of the tornado. Things did get a little wet, but it appears everything at this point is salvageable.

The pictures below were taken at the fruit stand. The first one was taken on 4 September--the Sunday after the storm (through my dirty windshield). The place was a bit rough even before the storm (to the point where I joked about what the storm had done to it--absolutely nothing--it looked virtually the same). The other three were taken on Friday afternoon and show what's left of the site.

DeWitt's Fruit and Vegetable Shed--Sunday, 4 September 2005 (six days after KTMB).