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- Hurricane Laura caused severe damage to the US Gulf of Mexico coast and is moving inland with violent winds.
- According to the authorities, the number of deaths has continued to rise.
The force of the storm covered the roofs, tore the facades of the houses and brought down pylons. Seawater flooded the coast inland.
The authorities now assume six deaths. Four of them died because trees fell on houses, Louisiana State Governor John Bel Edwards said.
Wind speeds of up to 240 kilometers per hour
“Laura” hit the American continent on Thursday with winds of up to 240 kilometers per hour. One person drowned in a storm on a boat, another died from carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by an emergency power generator, Louisiana authorities announced.
Entire factory buildings were washed away by the storm.
Keystone
The power grid had suffered significant damage, Edwards said, but he also made clear that authorities feared a worse scenario overall. “It is clear that we did not suffer absolutely catastrophic damage.” However, the lives of thousands and thousands of people have been turned upside down.
Trump announces a visit
Visiting the headquarters of the civil protection agency Fema, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced that he would probably go to the affected areas over the weekend.
A whistle was heard as the hurricane struck Sulfur in Louisiana, hurricane hunter Josh Morgerman wrote on Twitter in the early hours of the morning. One of her videos shows how the storm whips the masses of rain in front of it: in the light of a street lamp, they look like swirls of fog that move quickly. People like Morgerman put themselves in imminent danger from storms regardless of warnings.
Like “a roaring jet engine”
Authorities had previously ordered hundreds of thousands of people to safety. The closer the storm approached the US coast on Wednesday, the more urgent the warnings became. “Now take cover,” the National Hurricane Center finally wrote. It is a “life threatening situation”.
The hurricane sounds like “a roaring jet engine”, a reporter for the television station CNN described the situation in Lake Charles (Louisiana). The hurricane shook even the most stable buildings and shattered glass flew through the air.
Fire in a chemical factory
A chemical factory caught fire Thursday in nearby Westlake. Police said there was a chlorine gas leak. People had to keep staying in their homes. “Laura” quickly weakened over the mainland on Thursday, as expected, but remained dangerous.
According to police, chlorine gas was released during the fire at the Westlake chemical plant.
Keystone
The cyclone had quickly gained traction over unusually warm seawater and went from category two to category four in just a few hours on Wednesday. This made “Laura” the first very strong hurricane of the season.
