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Laura thrashes Louisiana, but damage is less than predicted

LAKE
CHARLES, La. (AP) — One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the
U.S., Laura barreled across Louisiana on Thursday, shearing off roofs,
killing at least six people and maintaining 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 despite a trail
of demolished buildings, entire neighborhoods left in ruins and more
than 875,000 people without power, a sense of relief prevailed that
Laura was not the annihilating menace 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
called Laura 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 (241 kph) put it
among the strongest systems on record in the U.S. Not until 11 hours
after landfall did Laura
finally lose hurricane status as it plowed north and thrashed Arkansas,
and even by Thursday evening, it remained a tropical storm with winds
of 40 mph (65 kph).

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 that 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. At the
local airport, planes were overturned, some on top of each other.

In
front of the courthouse was a Confederate statue that local officials
had voted to keep in place just days earlier. After Laura, it was toppled.

“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 gave 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. State and
federal aircraft headed into the skies over the coast to look for signs
of any other industrial damage.

The fatalities included a
14-year-old girl and a 68-year-old man who died when trees fell on their
homes in Louisiana, as well as a 24-year-old man who died of carbon
monoxide poisoning from a generator inside his residence. Another man
drowned in a boat that sank during the storm, authorities said.

No
deaths had been confirmed in Texas, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott
said would amount to “a miracle.” Chevellce Dunn considered herself
among the fortunate after a night spent huddling on a sofa with her son,
daughter and four nieces and nephews as winds rocked their home in
Orange, Texas. Left without power in sweltering heat, she didn’t know
when power might be restored.

“It ain’t going to be easy. As long as my kids are fine, I’m fine,” Dunn said.

President Donald Trump planned to visit the Gulf Coast this weekend to tour the damage.

More
than 580,000 coastal residents evacuated under the shadow of a
coronavirus pandemic and calls for masks and social distancing to combat
its spread. It was the largest evacuation order since the pandemic
began and many people followed it, filling hotels and sleeping in cars.
Although not everyone fled from the coast, officials credited those who
did leave for minimizing the loss of life.

Forecasters had warned
that the storm surge of 15 to 20 feet would be “unsurvivable” and could
push 40 miles inland. Edwards said the storm surge wound up being
measured in the range of 9 feet to 12 feet — still bad, but far from the
worst forecast. He was hopeful that damaged homes could quickly be made
habitable.

The priority, Edwards said, was search and rescue,
followed by efforts to find hotel or motel rooms for those unable to
stay in their homes. Officials in Texas and Louisiana have both sought
to avoid traditional mass shelters for evacuees over fears of spreading
COVID-19, and Edwards was concerned that the storm would inhibit
coronavirus testing as schools and universities are reopening.

Bucky
Millet, 78, of Lake Arthur, Louisiana, considered evacuating but
decided to ride out the storm with family due to concerns about the
coronavirus. He said a small tornado blew the cover off the bed of his
pickup and made him think the roof on his house was next.

“You’d hear a crack and a boom and everything shaking,” he said.

The
force of Laura’s winds blew out every window of the living room in the
Lake Charles house where Bethany Agosto survived the storm with her
sister and two others. They sought safety in a closet when the hurricane
was at its worst.

“It was like a jigsaw puzzle in this closet. We were on top of each other, just holding each other and crying,” Agosto said.

The
storm was so powerful that it could regain strength after turning east
and reaching the Atlantic Ocean, potentially threatening the densely
populated Northeast.

Laura hit the U.S. after killing nearly two
dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and
three in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused
intense flooding.

It was the seventh named storm to strike the
U.S. this year, setting a new record for U.S. landfalls by the end of
August. The old record was six in 1886 and 1916, according to Colorado
State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.

Laura was tied with five other storms for fifth most powerful U.S. hurricane, behind the 1935’s Labor Day storm, 1969’s Camille, 1992’s Andrew and 2004’s Charley, Klotzbach said.

Associated Press contributors include Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia; Kevin McGill in New Orleans; John L. Mone in Holly Beach, Louisiana; Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas; Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland; Juan A. Lozano in Houston; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; and Sophia Tulp in Atlanta.