LAPLACE — They heard the sound of a train and knew what it meant.

Gerry Lyn Delome grabbed her family and ran to the bathroom to seek shelter as a tornado ripped through their home on Sawgrass Drive in LaPlace.

“My oldest child and I were in the front bedroom laying in the bed because we’ve been sick,” Gerry Lyn said. “We heard the sound, that familiar freight train sound. We had five or six seconds. I grabbed my daughter and my other child and we jumped into the tub.”

Gerry Lyn said her husband, John, was closing the front door when he was pushed back by the force of the wind and thrown to the ground.

“It was over in like 10 seconds,” she said. “(John) came out and said, ‘Baby, we’ve got to make a claim.’ I thought the tree had fallen on the house until I opened the bathroom door and saw I had skylights everywhere.”

John described the sound of the tornado as the “strangest, God-awful sound you ever want to hear.”

“I’ve walked around the neighborhood; you can see the path (the tornado) took,” John said. “Some places weren’t even touched. This destruction is worse than (Hurricane) Isaac.”

John said he wouldn’t wish this type of devastation on anyone.

“Everything went pitch black,” John said. “It was just horrible. It was three years to the day that we moved into our house after Hurricane Isaac hit that the tornado hit. The house is totaled.”

The Delome family is currently staying with relatives because their home is structurally unsound.

“It’s caving in more and more,” Gerry Lyn said. “We’re just numb.”

Delome family members were not the only ones who were home when the tornado came through. Erica White and her father were at their residence on Yorktown Drive when they, too, heard the train noise.

“It was a different experience, I’ve never experienced being in a tornado before,” White said. “We were in the kitchen and we heard the train sound, then we saw out the window and ran to the bathroom. Neither of us was injured.”

White, who said she has helped those in other states with natural disaster relief, said her experience with the tornado was “just a part of life.”

“We just need to rebuild,” she said. “I don’t wish this upon anyone, but it’s something that happens. We just have to pick up the pieces and rebuild our community.”

Some of the destruction at White’s residence included a leveled 12×12 shed, the totaling of her father’s apartment in the back yard and the destruction of a patio. The main house also sustained water damage.

White started cleaning up what she could the day after the tornado struck and was out before 8 a.m. Thursday trying to get more done.

“I’m accustomed to seeing devastation but I’m not accustomed to seeing it here,” White said. “You have like two blocks that were hit and then the next one doesn’t have as much devastation. Because we didn’t have power, we couldn’t move back into the house. We had to stay at a hotel.”

Not having power didn’t stop Missy Tarver and her family from staying in their home.

Tarver lives at the residence with her father and boyfriend, who, luckily, weren’t home when the tornado came through Arlington Drive.

“We came right after it all happened,” she said. “My brother called me and said we needed to head home because our house was completely destroyed. It was devastating. It’s a terrible feeling. Our roof fell in. Everything is messed up and thrown in the back yard. Things are just terrible. I don’t know what else to say except that the Lord will prevail.”

Tarver has lived in LaPlace her whole life and seen destruction before with hurricanes.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” she said. “Even though we don’t have power we are staying in the house. We are getting through this by the grace of God.”