By The New York Times
After landfall overnight with 150 m.p.h. winds, Laura ripped northward. Officials confirmed at least six deaths tied to the storm, and hundreds of thousands of people have lost power.
Hurricane Laura swept ashore as one of the most powerful storms to hit the U.S.
Hurricane Laura, which began the day rolling ashore as one of the strongest storms ever to hit Louisiana, plowed trough the state from south to north, gradually weakening to become a tropical storm but wreaking destruction all along its path and killing at least six people before the afternoon was through.
After slamming coastal communities in the early hours of Thursday, the storm roared into the city of Lake Charles, La., ripping apart buildings and causing a fire at a chemical plant, which sent acrid smoke billowing into the sky and prompted the state to order people living nearby to stay inside with their windows shut.
Laura then steamrolled northward, maintaining hurricane force well into the afternoon, knocking out power to at least 880,000 utility customers in the region and leaving tens of thousands of people without drinkable water.
Four of the deaths tied to the storm in Louisiana were caused by trees falling on homes, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards. One was a 14-year-old girl in Leesville, La., a small city about 100 miles inland; the others were a 68-year-old man near Iota, La., a 64-year-old woman in Allen Parish and a 51-year-old man in Jackson Parish, which is 200 miles from the coast.
In Calcasieu Parish, where Lake Charles is, a 24-year-old man died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator inside his house, and another male, whose age was not yet known, drowned when a boat he was in sank during the storm, according to a spokesperson for Louisiana’s health department. Read more from The New York Times.
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