Tulane medical students help with tornado recovery

A group of Tulane medical students spent their weekend helping homeowners in New Orleans East clean up following last week’s destructive tornado. The first-year School of Medicine students shoveled, raked and hauled hundreds of pounds of debris to the curb for collection.

The tornado was the first EF-3 to hit New Orleans since recordkeeping began in 1950, slamming into the neighborhood with winds up to 165 miles per hour. David Chernobylsky helped organize the group of student volunteers and says he’s never seen anything comparable to the damage.

“To hear about this and how it just, completely out of nowhere here’s a tornado and here’s a community destroyed is not something that I have been exposed to,” says Chernobylsky. “So for me, I immediately wanted to do something.”

The students worked with NOLA Tree Project, a local nonprofit organization that plants trees, hosts community service outreach programs and provides disaster recovery assistance with the help of volunteers.