Marco becomes hurricane headed for coast
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI » Marco became a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico Sunday on a path toward the Louisiana coast. Tropical Storm Laura battered the Dominican Republic and Haiti and headed to the same part of the U.S. coast, also as a potential hurricane. It would be the first time two hurricanes form in the Gulf of Mexico simultaneously, according to records dating to at least 1900, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.
The National Hurricane Center said Marco was about 300 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and heading north-northwest at 14 miles per hour, packing winds of 75 miles per hour. The center warned of life-threatening storm surges and hurricane-force winds along the Gulf Coast.
Haitian civil protection officials said they had received reports that a 10-year-old girl had died when a tree fell on a home in the southern coastal town of Anse-a-Pitres, on the border with the Dominican Republic. It was the first reported death from the storm. Hundreds of thousands were without power in the Dominican Republic, as both countries on the island of Hispaniola suffered heavy flooding.
A hurricane watch was issued for the New Orleans metro area, which Hurricane Katrina pummeled in August 2005.
Laura was centered about 95 miles off the eastern tip of Cuba Sunday morning, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph. It was moving west-northwest at 21 mph.
Crews armed with megaphones in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo had urged dozens of residents in flood-prone areas to evacuate before Laura’s heavy rains hit. The storm left more than 100,000 people without water in the Dominican Republic on Saturday night, while earlier it snapped trees and knocked out power to more than 200,000 customers in neighboring Puerto Rico.