Hurricane Laura continues to pose threat
Remnants of Hurricane Laura unleashed heavy rain and twisters hundreds of miles inland from a path of death and mangled buildings along the Gulf Coast, and forecasters said an eastern turn would again make the storm a looming threat, this time to the densely populated Atlantic Seaboard.
Trees were down and power was out as far north as Arkansas, where remnants of the storm were centered as the once fearsome category four hurricane weakened to a depression after dark. Additional damage was possible as new tornado warnings were issued after nightfall in Mississippi and Arkansas after one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the United States barreled across Louisiana on Thursday. The storm peeled away roofs and splintered utility poles while killing at least six people.
A full assessment of the damage could take days. By then, the storm could re-energise and pose a threat to several Northeast states by Saturday, forecasters said.
Despite demolished buildings, entire neighborhoods left in ruins and almost 900,000 homes and businesses without power, a sense of relief prevailed that Laura was not the annihilating menace forecasters had feared.
“It is clear that we did not sustain and suffer the absolute, catastrophic damage that we thought was likely,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said. “But we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage.” He called Laura the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, meaning it surpassed even Katrina, which was a category three storm when it hit in 2005.
The hurricane’s top wind speed of 150 mph (241 kph) put it among the strongest systems on record in the US. Not until 11 hours after landfall did Laura finally lose hurricane status as it plowed north and thrashed Arkansas, and even by Thursday evening, it remained a tropical storm with winds of 40 mph (65 kph).
The storm came ashore in low-lying Louisiana and clobbered Lake Charles, an industrial and casino city of 80,000 people. On Broad Street, many buildings had partially collapsed, and those that didn’t were missing chunks. Windows were blown out, awnings ripped away and trees split in half in eerily misshapen ways. A floating casino came unmoored and hit a bridge, and small planes were thrown atop each other at the airport.