LAKE CHARLES, LA (AFP) — Hurricane Laura was forecast to become an extremely powerful Category 4 storm Wednesday, prompting warnings of an “unsurvivable” storm surge and evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of coastal residents of Louisiana and Texas.
The National Hurricane Center said Laura was continuing to “rapidly strengthen” in the Gulf of Mexico and was packing winds of 125 miles per hour (205 kilometers per hour) at 11:00 Eastern Time (1500 GMT).
Currently a Category 3 hurricane, it was forecast to become an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 — the second-highest on the scale — in the afternoon and make landfall along the coast of Texas and Louisiana overnight.
An “unsurvivable storm surge with large and destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana,” the NHC said.
Storm surges could penetrate up to 30 miles inland along parts of the coasts, and peak surge coupled with high tide could see water as high as 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6.0 meters) above normal levels.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, speaking on the Weather Channel, urged residents to evacuate, saying “you have a few more hours to make sure you get out of harm’s way.”
“This is a very dangerous storm, a stronger storm than what most have come through there,” Abbott said. “Do everything you can to get out of the way.
“Your property can be replaced,” he said. “Your life cannot be replaced.”
President Donald Trump told residents in the path of the storm to “listen to local officials.”
“Hurricane Laura is a very dangerous and rapidly intensifying hurricane,” Trump tweeted. “My Administration remains fully engaged with state & local emergency managers.”
– ‘Not going to play with the good lord’ –
Jimmy Ray was among those heeding evacuation orders in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
“We were going to try to ride it out at the house, but we found out that it was going to be too bad,” Ray told AFP outside an evacuation facility.
Another evacuee in Lake Charles, Patricia Como, said her sister, her brother, cousins and other family members had stayed behind but she was “not going to take a chance.”
“I’m not going to play with the good lord,” Como said.
At 1500 GMT, Hurricane Laura was about 225 miles south-southeast of Lake Charles and moving north-west at 16 miles an hour.
The NHC said the storm was expected to dump between five to 10 inches (13 to 26 cms) of rain on parts of the Gulf Coast between Wednesday and Friday.
Craig Brown, the acting mayor of Galveston, Texas, which suffered the deadliest hurricane in US history in 1900 with thousands of deaths, said the authorities were “monitoring this very closely.”
“We’ve had good cooperation from our residents on evacuation,” Brown said, adding that it was not mandatory.
“If they want to stay put, then we allow them to do that,” he said. “But we do tell them if they stay, they may not have any emergency services available to them.”
Angela Jouett, director of evacuation operations in Lake Charles, said the authorities had new protocols in place becuse of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People that come in they get their hands sprayed with sanitizer,” Jouett said. “They’re having their temperature checks, and we’re also spacing everybody in six foot distancing.”
– Struck Haiti, Dominican Republica –
In New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the historic French Quarter was empty of tourists, while sandbags were piled up in front of the doorways of colonial-style buildings and windows were boarded up with plywood.
“I’m not worried about the water getting in here from the storm, I’m worried about the rain and then the pumps not working and that’s what will cause the flooding,” Robert Dunlap, a business owner, told AFP.
New Orleans remains traumatized from Katrina, which made landfall as a Category 3 storm, flooding 80 percent of the city and killing more than 1,800 people.
Laura earlier caused flooding in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, killing at least 25 people.
In Cuba, it caused material damage but no deaths.
The Atlantic storm season, which runs through November, could be one of the busiest ever this year, with the NHC predicting as many as 25 named storms. Laura is the 12th so far.
Tropical Storm Marco — which also churned through the Gulf of Mexico — was downgraded from a hurricane and dissipated on Tuesday off the coast of Louisiana before reaching land.
© Agence France-Presse