Louisiana took the brunt of the damage when the Category 4 system barred Lake Charles, an industrial and casino city of 80,000 people. Laura’s powerful wind gusts blew windows out into tall buildings and smashed around glass and piles. Police saw a drifting casino that did not dock and hit a bridge.
Drone video showed water around houses with many of their roofs removed. A 14-year-old girl and a 68-year-old man died when trees fell on their homes, authorities said.
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The hurricane’s top wind speed of 150 mph (241 km / h) placed it among the most powerful systems on the record in the US. Only until 11 hours after the attack did Laura finally weaken in a tropical storm when he headed to Arkansas.
“It looks like 1,000 tornadoes have passed through here. It’s just destruction everywhere,” said Brett Geymann, who weathered the storm with three family members in Moss Bluff, near Lake Charles. He described Laura running around his house with the roar of a jet engine around 2 p.m.
“There are houses that are completely gone. They were there yesterday, but now gone,” he said.
Not long after dawn offered the first glimpse of the destruction, a massive plume of smoke began to billow over Lake Charles, where authorities responded to a chlorine leak at a chemical plant. Police said the leak was at a facility run by Biolab, which produces chemicals used in household cleaners such as Comet bleach and chlorine powder for swimming pools.
Residents in the neighborhood were told to close their doors and windows and set climate rules.
Elsewhere, initial reports suggest that the destruction may be a little less than originally feared, but a full damage assessment could take days. Wind and rain blew too hard for authorities to check on survivors in some hard hit places.
Hundreds of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate prior to the hurricane, but not everyone fled the area, which was devastated by Hurricane Rita in 2005.
“There are some people still in town, and people are calling … but there is no way to get to them,” Tony Guillory, president of the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, said over the phone of a Lake Charles government building that shook from the storm.
Guillory said he hoped the stranded people could be rescued later in the day, but he feared that blocked roads, downed power lines and floodwaters could get in the way.
“We know everyone who stayed so close to the coast, we should pray for them, because seeing the storm surge, there would be little chance of survival,” Louisiana Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser told Good Morning America from ABC.
More than 700,000 homes and businesses were without power in the two states, according to the website PowerOutage.Us, which follows reports.
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Forecasters had warned that the storm surge of 15 to 20 feet would be “unsustainable” and could push 40 miles into the country. They expected “catastrophic” damage along a stretch of shore from Lake Charles to Port Arthur, Texas. According to the hurricane center, damaging winds ranged outward to 280 kilometers (280 kilometers).
Dick Gremillion, the emergency director at Calcasieu Parish, said authorities were unable to help anyone or investigate the effects of the storm.
More than 580,000 coastal residents were ordered to take part in the biggest evacuation since the coronavirus pandemic began and many did, filling hotels and sleeping in cars because officials did not want to open large shelters that would spread more of COVID -19 could invite.
But in the Cameron Parish, where Laura landed, Nungesser said 50 to 150 people refused to go and planned to endure the storm, some in high-rise homes and even recreational vehicles. The result could be fatal.
Bucky Millet, 78, of Lake Arthur, Louisiana, considered evacuating, but decided to end the storm with family because of concerns he had about the coronavirus. He said a small tornado blew the cover of his pickup’s bed and made him think the roof on his house was next door.
“You would hear a crack and a tree and shake everything,” he said.
Becky Clements, 56, took no chances. She evacuated from Lake Charles after hearing it could take an immediate hit. With memories of Rita’s destruction nearly 15 years ago, she and her family found an Airbnb hundreds of miles inland.
“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.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Pete Gaynor called on people in Laura’s path to stay home, if that was still safe. “Do not go sightseeing. You’re putting yourself, your family in danger, and you’re putting first responders in danger,” he told CBS this morning.
FEMA had resources ready to help survivors, Gaynor said. Edwards mobilized the National Guard to help, and State Department of Wildlife Crews had boats prepared for water rescue.
Forecasters expected that a weakened Laura would cause widespread flash flooding in states far from the coast. Little Rock, Arkansas, expected storms of 50 mph (80 km / h) and a stream of rain until Friday. The storm was so strong that it was able to regain strength after turning east and reaching the Atlantic Ocean, potentially threatening the densely populated Northeast.
Laura hit the US after killing nearly two dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused intense flooding.
It was the seventh-named storm to hit the U.S. this year, setting a new record for U.S. landfall in late August. The old record was six in 1886 and 1916, according to hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University.
Laura was bound by five other storms for the fifth most powerful U.S. hurricane, behind the 1935s Labor Day storm, 1969s Camille, 1992s Andrew and 2004s Charley, Klotzbach said.
Copyright © 2020 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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