Laura upends Louisiana coast
A journalist photographs damage left in the wake of Hurricane Laura on Thursday in Holly Beach, La.
LAKE CHARLES, La. — One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. pounded the Gulf Coast on Thursday, shearing off roofs and killing a least four people, as Laura barreled across Louisiana and maintained ferocious strength while carving a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
A full assessment of the damage wrought by the Category 4 system was likely to take days. But initial reports offered hope that Laura, despite leaving entire neighborhoods in ruins and more than 875,000 people without power, was not the annihilating menace that forecasters had feared.
“It is clear that we did not sustain and suffer the absolute, catastrophic damage that we thought was likely,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “But we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage,” he said.
He called it the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, meaning it surpassed even Katrina, which was a Category 3 storm when it hit in 2005.
The hurricane’s top wind speed of 150 mph put it among the most powerful systems on record in the U.S. Not until 11 hours after landfall did Laura finally weaken into a tropical storm as it plowed north and thrashed Arkansas with powerful winds and heavy rain.
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 didn’t were missing chunks. Windows were blown out, awnings ripped away and trees split in half in eerily misshapen ways. Police spotted a floating casino that came unmoored and hit a bridge.
“It looks like 1,000 tornadoes went through here. It’s just destruction everywhere,” said Brett Geymann, who rode out the storm with three family members in Moss Bluff, near Lake Charles. He described Laura passing over his house with the roar of a jet engine around 2 a.m.
“There are houses that are totally gone. They were there yesterday, but now gone,” he said.
Not long after daybreak offered the first glimpse of the destruction, a massive plume of smoke visible for miles began rising from a chemical plant. Police said the leak was at a facility run by Biolab, which manufactures chemicals used in household cleaners such as Comet bleach scrub and chlorine powder for pools.
Nearby residents were told to close their doors and windows and turn off air conditioners.
The fatalities included a 14-year-old girl and a 68-yearold man died when trees fell on their homes in Louisiana.