Laura reaches Category 4 status
DELCAMBRE, LA. >> More than 500,000 residents in Louisiana and Texas were urged to flee their homes Wednesday as Hurricane Laura roared toward the Gulf Coast, fueling grave warnings that the storm would deliver a calamitous assault with powerful winds and a storm surge that meteorologists declared “unsurvivable.”
Laura intensified into a Category 4 hurricane as it churned through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, growing into a monster of a storm that forecasters described as one of the worst to pound the region in decades. Officials warned that a vast stretch of the coast, reaching from central Louisiana to west of Galveston, Texas, could expect to be barraged by hurricane-level conditions.
The storm was projected to make landfall late Wednesday or early today, forecasters said, with wind gusts exceeding 140 mph.
Low-lying communities along the coast stood to be engulfed by a wall of water, reaching as high as 20 feet in some places. Forecasters also warned of heavy rainfall and the likelihood of tornadoes.
“I’m asking people right now to pay attention to this storm, to get out of harm’s way,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana told residents during a briefing Wednesday before adding that they had limited time to do so before the weather worsened to dangerous levels. “Understand, our state has not seen a storm surge like this in many, many decades.”
The sense of alarm intensified as the storm gained strength.
“I don’t know if it’s too late,” said the Rev. Joe Miller, who lives in Newton, Texas, a small inland town straddling the state line that is in Laura’s expected path. “We had planned to stay,” he added. “Now, I don’t know.”
Cassandra Duhon figured she did not have much of a choice. Her husband, who works on an oil rig, could not get home, and she did not want to endure the brunt of the storm alone with her 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter.
She would have to flee her home in Cameron Parish, which is directly in the sights of Hurricane Laura. The trouble, she said, was finding somewhere to go.
Duhon tested positive for the coronavirus about a week before the hurricane prompted a mandatory evacuation for Cameron Parish, and when she began calling around for hotels that would be willing to take her, she struck out. She ultimately settled on taking a 16-hour drive to an extended family member’s home in Colorado.