Power out for 600,000 after ravaging storm

LAKE CHARLES, La. — Hundreds of thousands of people across Louisiana were still without power or water Friday, a day after Laura sawed a devastating path through the state, killing at least 14 people, and officials warned that basic services could be knocked out for weeks or longer along parts of the Gulf Coast.

Meanwhile, the hurricane’s remnants threatened to bring flooding and tornadoes to Tennessee as the storm drifted north. Forecasters warned the system could strengthen into a tropical storm again upon returning to the Atlantic Ocean this weekend.

A day after the Category 4 storm hit, more bodies emerged in the aftermath in Louisiana and neighboring Texas. The dead included five people killed by fallen trees and one person who drowned in a boat. Eight people died from carbon monoxide poisoning due to unsafe operation of generators, including three inside a Texas pool hall, where the owner had let shrimp boat laborers and homeless men take shelter.

“We need help,” said Lawrence Faulk, 57, who returned to a home with no roof in hardhit Cameron Parish, which was littered with downed power lines. “We need ice, water, blue tarps — everything that you would associate with the storm, we need it. Like two hours ago.”

In Lake Charles, Mayor Nic Hunter cautioned that there was no timetable for restoring electricity and that water treatment plants “took a beating,” resulting in barely a trickle of water coming out of most faucets in the city of 80,000 people.

“If you come back to Lake Charles to stay, make sure you understand the above reality and are prepared to live in it for many days, probably weeks,” Hunter wrote on Facebook.

Forty nursing homes were operating on generators Friday, and assessments were under way to determine if residents of 11 facilities that had been evacuated could return.

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

As the grueling recovery came into focus, short bursts of rain heaped new misery onto homes missing windows and roofs. The prevailing sense of relief that Laura, one of the most powerful hurricanes to strike the U.S., was not as brutal as originally feared offered little comfort to residents now cleaning up the mess.

More than 600,000 homes and businesses were without power in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, according to the website PowerOutage.us.