Deaths, worries about assistance mount after massive hurricane
LAKE CHARLES, LA. >> In a matter of hours last week, Hurricane Laura tore through the tire shop Layla Winbush’s family started just under a year ago, reducing most of it to rubble and scattering hundreds of tires across the lot. The storm also damaged her home, which now reeks of mold.
Federal and state officials are on the ground to help residents with home repairs and hotel stays. But Winbush said she feels alone, particularly after seeing a video of President Donald Trump, who visited the area Saturday, joking with Gulf Coast officials that they could sell copies of his signature for $10,000.
“We can’t depend on the president. We can’t depend on nobody,” she said. “We’ll just take what we have and get it done.”
As evacuated Lake Charles residents return home, many worry they wouldn’t have enough support from both the federal and state governments as they face a rebuilding process certain to take several months, if not longer.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Monday warned that residents were in for a long recovery, with 324,000 power outages across the state and 600,000 people either without water or under boil water advisories.
Meanwhile, stifling heat
and humidity were adding to the trouble of clearing out debris, patching roofs and starting rebuilding work.
“This is going to be a very difficult storm to recover from,” he said.
But Edwards praised the federal response so far, saying the Federal Emergency Management Agency was quick to arrive with assistance and sent hundreds of workers for recovery efforts. On Monday, Edwards announced a temporary roofing program operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Nineteen deaths in Texas and Louisiana have been attributed to the storm; half were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from the unsafe operation of generators. The latest, reported Monday by Louisiana’s health department, was a 49-year-old man in
Rapides Parish who died when a tree he was cutting fell on him.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall Thursday just south of Lake Charles near Cameron, Louisiana, packing 150 mph winds and a storm surge as high as 15 feet in some areas.
Needs are substantial. More than 67,000 people in Louisiana have registered for assistance from FEMA so far, according to Edwards’ office.
In hard-hit Calcasieu Parish, some waited hours for tarps, water and other supplies at distribution sites, said parish spokesman Tom Hoefer. The parish had been without power, and in many areas, including the parish seat of Lake Charles that’s home to more than 78,000 people, water had not been flowing from taps, he said.
Crews will have to rebuild hundreds of transmission towers and reset downed power poles and lines, said Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness for the Edison Electric Institute, the association of investorowned electric companies in the U.S.
Damage assessments were only beginning, but projections from two Boston-based disaster modeling firms — Karen Clark & Co. and AIR Worldwide — indicated insured losses to U.S. properties from Laura could reach $8 billion to $9 billion.
Evacuees were spread across Louisiana and Texas, as officials tried to keep people from group shelters because of the coronavirus outbreak.
In New Orleans, city officials said about 9,200 evacuees were housed across 33 hotels. Volunteer organizations helped the city assemble a resource center, providing counseling and medical services along with donated food, clothing and diapers, according to Collin Arnold, the city’s emergency preparedness director.
“It’s extremely complicated,” Arnold said. “You’re dealing with 33 different properties, and the amount of personnel required to have people at every property is pretty staggering ... We would be congregate sheltering in any other hurricane season without COVID-19 hanging over our heads. We would be in large stadiums, arenas.”