Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwestern Louisiana as a fierce Category 4 monster with 150 mph winds early Thursday, sweeping a low-lying coastline with ocean water that forecasters said could be 20 feet deep and unbearable.
The National Hurricane Center said the storm, which intensified rapidly Wednesday before plowing ashore, came ashore at 1 a.m. CDT near Cameron, a small community about 48 miles east of the Texas border,
“Potentially catastrophic effects will continue,” forecasters said.
Winds stormed above hurricane force up to 127 mph (204 km / h), while Laura’s northern eye wall moved onshore across Cameron Parish, the National Hurricane Center, and forecasters said even stronger winds could tear buildings apart, place trees and cars as toys. smiet.
Authorities had asked coastal residents of Texas and Louisiana to evacuate, but not everyone did so before strong winds began to buffalo trees back and forth in an area devastated by Rita in 2005.
Hurricane Laura exploded off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana in an image of the GOES East satellite of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) August 26, 2020.
CIRA | NOAA | via Reuters
Video and photos on social media showed torrents of rain sideways along streetlights in Lake Charles, and streets covered with water closer to shore. A sudden storm surge turned cameras around to capture the effects of the hurricane.
With hours of violent weather ahead, officials said the extent of destruction would probably not be clear until the end of the day, when search and rescue missions will begin.
Receiving energy from the warm Gulf of Mexico, the system arrived early Thursday during high tide as the most powerful hurricane to hit the U.S. so far this year.
“It looks like it’s in full beast mode, which is not what you want to see when you’re in the way,” Miami University hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said.
Hurricane-force winds extending 60 miles from the center of the storm, near the coast, forecasters, and bands of heavy rain fell 30 miles from the shore at Lake Charles.
Maximum sustained winds increased to 150 mph for the night, and forecasters said that rain could fall to 38 centimeters. Forecasters issued a string of tornado warnings as the storm drifted to land, but there were no immediate reports of damage. More than 100,000 homes and businesses were without power in Texas and Louisiana.
One major highway in Louisiana already had standing water when Laura’s outer tires moved ashore with tropical storm surges. Earlier Wednesday, the wind picked up when shoppers stormed a supermarket in low-lying Delcambre.
Trent Savoie, 31, said he remained standing. “With four children and 100 farm animals, it’s just hard to get out,” he said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards feared the dire predictions did not resonate despite authorities putting more than 500,000 coastal residents under mandatory evacuation orders.
Officials said at least 150 people had refused plea to leave and plan to weather the storm in everything from elevated homes to recreational vehicles on the Cameron Parish coast, which could be completely covered by ocean water.
“It’s a very sad situation,” said Ashley Buller, assistant director of emergency preparedness. “We have done everything we can to encourage them to leave.”
Edwards activated the entire National Guard of the state. In Lake Charles, members of the guard drove school buses through neighborhoods, picking up families. Across the state line in Port Arthur, Texas, a few stragglers boarded evacuation buses, and city officials announced that two C-130 transport planes offered the last chance to depart.
A Category 4 hurricane can make wide areas uninhabitable for weeks or months and knock out power just as long. The threat of such devastation posed a new challenge to disaster relief for a government already strained under the coronavirus pandemic. The parts of Louisiana that were under evacuation orders included areas that garnered high rates of positive Covid-19 tests.
People board buses at the Port Arthur Civic Center to evacuate the city before Hurricane Laura on August 26, 2020 in Port Arthur, Texas.
Eric Thayer | Getty Images
The National Hurricane Center continued to increase its estimate of Laura’s storm surge, from 10 feet just days ago to twice as large – a height that forecasters said they would be particularly deadly.
On Twitter, President Donald Trump urged coastal residents to heed officials. Hurricane warnings were issued from San Luis Pass, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, reaching inland 200 miles. Storm surge warnings extend from Freeport, Texas, to the mouth of the Mississippi River.
For some, the decision to leave home left no room to remain. Beware of opening massage parlors during a pandemic, Texas officials put evacuees in hotels instead, but Austin stopped arriving before dawn because officials said they were running out of rooms. Other evacuees called the state’s 211 information line and were directed to Ennis, outside Dallas, only to be told after driving hundreds of miles, no hotels or vouchers were available.
Taniquia Ned and her sisters appeared without money to rent a room, saying the family had burned their savings after losing jobs due to the coronavirus. “The Covid-19 just completely wiped us out,” said Shalonda Joseph, 43, a teacher at Port Arthur.
Edwards argued that the storm meant suspension of community testing for Covid-19 at a crucial time – as elementary and high schools in Louisiana open and students return to high school.
Forecasters said storm surges swept through waves could submerge entire cities.
Laura was expected to provide widespread flash water in states far from the coast. Flood watches were issued for much of Arkansas, and forecasters said heavy rainfall could arrive by Friday in parts of Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. Laura is so powerful that it is expected to become a tropical storm again once it reaches the Atlantic Ocean, possibly threatening the Northeast.
Becky Clements, 56, evacuated from Lake Charles after hearing it could take an immediate hit. She and her family found an Airbnb hundreds of miles inland. Nearly 15 years have passed since Hurricane Rita destroyed the city.
“The devastation that followed in our city and that whole corner of the state was just awful,” Clements recalled. “Whole communities were washed away, never to exist again.”
The hurricane also threatened a center of the U.S. energy industry when the majority of Gulf oil and natural gas production stopped. Consumers are unlikely to see large price increases as the pandemic has decimated the demand for fuel.
Laura closed in the US after killing nearly two dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, where the force erupted and caused intense flooding.
Laura will be the seventh named storm to hit the U.S. this year, setting a new record for U.S. landslides in late August. The old record was six in 1886 and 1916, according to hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University.
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