Hurricane Laura might’ve been the most powerful storm to ever hit Louisiana, but it was not as destructive as it could’ve been.
At a news conference Thursday, Gov. John Bel Edwards expressed relief that the Category 4 hurricane—which came ashore in Cameron Parish with 150 mph winds around 1 a.m. Thursday—did not produce “the absolute catastrophic damage we thought was likely,” the Louisiana Illuminator reports.
Edwards’ comments came less than 24 hours after a meteorologist at the National Weather Service predicted Hurricane Laura would overwhelm Cameron Parish with a wall of water two stories high. But the actual wall of water was about half as high because the hurricane moved just slightly east of what had been forecast.
The storm’s impact on Louisiana’s petrochemical industry is expected to be minor, with some Baton Rouge-based industrial construction firms with Lake Charles operations escaping the worst of the hurricane. Meanwhile, hotels in Baton Rouge are filled to capacity with evacuees and first responders.
That’s not to say Hurricane Laura didn’t cause some major devastation throughout the Lake Charles area. The Isle of Capri riverboat casino broke away from its dock and got lodged beneath the Calcasieu River Bridge, with that part of Interstate 10 still shut down as of Friday morning. In Westlake, unspecified hurricane damage caused a chemical fire to erupt at the BioLab plant, releasing an unknown amount of chlorine gas into the air. There were also 600,000 power outages, some of which left many Louisianans without drinking water.
The state’s death toll stands at six, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.
Meanwhile, FEMA says it’s working to “mobilize teams and supplies” to support relief efforts, WAFB-TV reports. President Donald Trump will visit Louisiana and Texas this weekend to survey the damage.
Read more about Laura’s destruction and FEMA’s planned relief efforts.
