Six tornadoes tore through New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana on Tuesday, injuring about 40 people as the storm roared across highways and streets, leveling trees, power lines and homes.

Brittany Ross said she was savoring the smell of her aunt's simmering white beans when the storm hit. "The place started shaking, kind of twisting," she said on Tuesday as she stood amid the wreckage at a small trailer park in New Orleans.

The tornado, she said, lifted the trailer off the ground and slammed it down.

Ross, 26, her aunt and two others crawled out of the wreckage amid flying debris uninjured, but suddenly homeless.

Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency throughout Louisiana, while search and rescue teams scoured the landscape for survivors.

"The width of the devastation was unlike any that I have seen before," Edwards told a news conference. "When you see it from the air you're even more impressed that so few people were injured and that nobody's life was lost."

The Louisiana National Guard said it was conducting search-and-rescue operations and assessing damage.