Hurricane Laura kills six as storm tears through Louisiana leaving thousands without power

Six people died after Hurricane Laura tore through Louisiana as powerful winds and pounding rain battered the Gulf Coast state, causing widespread damage.

One of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the US, Hurricane Laura produced winds of up to 150mph (240km/h) that caused the uprooting of trees, flooding and power cuts.

Authorities believe around half a million homes were without electricity on Thursday night after the Category 4 storm wreaked havoc across the state.

The hurricane has since been downgraded to a tropical storm and was headed for Arkansas early on Friday morning, with reduced wind speeds of around 40mph (65km/h), forecasters said.

New tornado warnings were issued after nightfall in Mississippi and Arkansas. A reported tornado tore part of the roof from a church in rural northeastern Arkansas as the remnants of Hurricane Laura crossed the state.

No injuries were reported but the system still packed a punch after smashing into Louisiana’s Gulf Coast near the line with Texas.

A full assessment of the damage could take days. By then, the storm could re-energise and pose a threat to several Northeast states by Saturday, forecasters said.

Despite demolished buildings, entire neighbourhoods left in ruins, 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 governor 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 put it among the strongest systems on record in the US. Not until 11 hours after landfall did Laura finally lose hurricane status as it ploughed north and thrashed Arkansas, and even up until Thursday evening, it remained a tropical storm with winds of 40 mph (65 kph).

The storm crashed 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. Windows were blown out, awnings ripped away and trees split in eerily misshapen ways. A floating casino came unmoored and hit a bridge, and small planes were thrown atop each other at the airport.

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

“It looks like 1,000 tornadoes went through here. It’s just destruction everywhere,” said Brett Geymann, who rode out the storm with three relatives in Moss Bluff, near Lake Charles. He described a roar like a jet engine as Laura passing over his house around 2 am.

“There are houses that are totally gone,” he said.

As the extent of the damage came into focus, 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 and chlorine powder for pools. Nearby residents were told to close their doors and windows, and the fire smouldered into the night.

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 Governor Greg Abbott called “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 the sweltering heat, she wondered when the electricity might come back.

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

It was unclear when the journey home would be complete for more than 580,000 coastal residents who evacuated under the shadow of a coronavirus pandemic. Although not everyone fled, officials credited those who did leave with minimising the loss of life.

A lower-than-expected storm surge also helped save lives. Forecasters said ocean water rose as much as 12 feet (4 meters) rather than the 20 feet (6 meters) that were predicted.

Bucky Millet, 78, of Lake Arthur, Louisiana, considered evacuating but decided because of the coronavirus to ride out the storm with family. A small tornado blew the cover off the bed of his pickup. That made him think the roof of his house was next.

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

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 huddled in a closet, where she said, “it was like a jigsaw puzzle...we were on top of each other, just holding each other and crying.”

Laura was the seventh named storm to strike the US this year, setting a new record for US landfalls by the end of August. Laura hit the US after killing nearly two dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic.

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

Additional reporting by Associated Press