Weak but still dangerous, Tropical Storm Laura remains a threat

Remnants of Hurricane Laura caused heavy rains and tornadoes hundreds of miles into the country, loosening a path of death and damaged buildings along the Gulf Coast, and forecasters warned that an easterly bend would again threaten the storm, this time for the densely populated area. Eastern Seaboard.

Trees were down and power was as north as Arkansas outside, where remnants of the storm that killed at least six people in the United States were central. The once-terrifying Category 4 hurricane that packed 150-mph winds weakened to a depression after dark.

New tornado warnings were issued after the night in Mississippi and Arkansas, hours after one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the United States, Thursday over Louisiana barrel.

A reported tornado tore part of the roof of a rural church in northeast Arkansas when the remains of Hurricane Laura swept across the state. No injuries were reported as the system picked up another punch after being shot off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana along the line with Texas.

A full assessment of the damage can take days. By this time, the storm on Saturday could re-energize and pose a threat to several Northeastern states, forecasters said.

Despite demolished buildings, abandoned entire weeks in ruins and nearly 900,000 homes and businesses without power along the coast, a sense of relief prevailed that Laura was not afraid of the devastating threat predictors.

“It is clear that we are not maintaining and suffering the absolute, catastrophic damage we thought was likely,” Louisiana Gov. said. John Bel Edwards. “But we sustained tremendous damage.”

He called Laura the most powerful hurricane to attack Louisiana, meaning he surpassed Katrina, which was a Category 3 storm when it hit in 2005.

The hurricane’s top wind speed of 150 mph (241 km / h) placed it among the strongest systems on the record in the US Only 11 hours after the storm, Laura finally lost hurricane status when he plowed north and Arkansas. hit, and even until Thursday evening, it remained a tropical storm with winds of 40 mph (65 km / h).

The storm made landfall in low-lying Louisiana and crippled Lake Charles, an industrial and casino town of 80,000 people. On Broad Street, many buildings had partially collapsed. Windows were blown out, awnings were torn away and trees split in horribly deformed ways. A floating casino came unmoor and hit a bridge, and small planes were thrown at each other at the airport.

In front of the courthouse was a Confederate statue that local officials voted to hold just days earlier. Laura knocked it down.

“It looks like 1,000 tornadoes have passed through here. It’s just destruction everywhere,” said Brett Geymann, who with three siblings survived the storm in Moss Bluff, near Lake Charles. He described a roar as a jet engine when Laura walked around his house around two o’clock

“There are houses that are completely gone,” he said.

When the extent of the damage came into focus, a massive plume of smoke for miles began to visible from a chemical plant. Police said the leak was at a facility run by Biolab, which produces chemicals used in household cleaners and chlorine powder for swimming pools. Residents in the neighborhood were told to close their doors and windows, and the fire was extinguished during the night.

The dead included a 14-year-old girl and a 68-year-old man who died when trees fell on their homes in Louisiana, as well as a 24-year-old man who died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator during his stay. Another man drowned in a boat that sank in the storm, authorities said.

In Texas, no deaths were confirmed, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called “a miracle.” Chevellce Dunn considered herself among the lucky ones after spending a night on a couch with her son, daughter and four nieces and nephews when winds shook her home in Orange, Texas. Left without electricity in sweltering heat, she wondered when the electricity could return.

“It will not be easy. As long as my children are good, I will be good,” Dunn said.

It was unclear when the trip home would be complete for more than 580,000 coastal residents who evacuated under the shadow of a coronavirus pandemic. Although not everyone fled, officials credited those who went along with minimizing the loss of life.

A lower than expected storm surge also helped save lives. Edwards said that ocean water rose at least 12 meters (4 meters) instead of the 20 meters (6 meters) provided.

Completing search and rescue operations was a top priority, Edwards said, followed by efforts to find hotel or motel rooms for those who could not stay in their homes. Officials in Texas and Louisiana both sought to prevent traditional mass evacuation for evacuees over fears of Covid-19 spreading.

Bucky Millet, 78, of Lake Arthur, Louisiana, considered evacuating but decided to quell the storm with family because of the coronavirus. A small tornado blew the cover of the bed of his pickup. That made him think the roof of his house was next door.

“You would hear a crack and a tree and shake everything,” he said.

Laura’s wind blew from every window of the living room in the Lake Charles home where Bethany Agosto survived the storm with her sister and two others. They shook in a closet, where she said, “it was like a puzzle … we were on top of each other, just holding each other and crying.”

Laura was the seventh named storm to hit the U.S. this year, setting a new record for U.S. landslides in late August. Laura hit the U.S. after killing nearly two dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic.

President Donald Trump planned this weekend to visit the Gulf Coast to address the damage.