Battered towns begin to repair hurricane havoc

LAKE CHARLES, La. — The day after Hurricane Delta blew through besieged southern Louisiana, residents started the routine again: dodging overturned cars on the roads, trudging through kneedeep water to flooded homes with ruined floors and no power, and pledging to rebuild after the storm.

Delta made landfall Friday evening near the coastal Louisiana town of Creole with top winds of 100 mph. It then moved over Lake Charles, a city where Hurricane Laura damaged nearly every home and building in late August. No deaths had been reported as of Saturday afternoon, but officials said people were not out of danger.

While Delta was a weaker storm than Category 4 Laura, it brought significantly more flooding, Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said. He estimated that hundreds of already battered homes across the city took on water. The recovery from the double impact will be long, the mayor said.

“Add Laura and Delta together and it’s just absolutely unprecedented and catastrophic,” Hunter said. “We are very concerned that with everything going in the country right now that this incident may not be on the radar nationally like it should be.”

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said no fatalities had been reported as of Saturday, but a hurricane’s wake can be treacherous. Only seven of the 32 deaths in Louisiana and

Texas attributed to Laura came the day that hurricane struck. A leading cause of the others was carbon monoxide poisoning from generators used in buildings without electricity.

“Everybody needs to exercise a lot of caution even now, and really, especially now,” Edwards said.

Delta, the 25th named storm of an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season, was the 10th named storm to hit the mainland U. S. this year, breaking a record set in 1916, Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach said.

It rapidly weakened over land and slowed into a tropical depression Saturday morning. Forecasters warned that heavy rain, storm surges and flash floods continued to pose dangers in areas from Texas to Mississippi. Large swells and rip currents closed beaches down to the Mexican border.

Remnants of the storm also could spawn tornadoes in the Tennessee Valley into Sunday, and flash floods could hit the southern Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.

Rebecca Santana, Stacey Plaisance and Alanna Durkin Richer are Associated Press writers.

Scott Clause / Lafayette ( La.) Daily Advertiser A resident of Jennings, La., clears trees from houses the day after Hurricane Delta blew through southern Louisiana. Delta is the 25th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.