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Hurricane Laura killed six people and “a huge amount of damage”

Hurricane Laura, one of the most violent to hit Louisiana, killed at least six people in the southern United States, but less damage than feared. Meteorologists have warned of flooding in northern Louisiana and Arkansas.

“We can be largely relieved”, reacted the governor of Louisiana John Bel Edwards, stressing that his state had escaped the announced “catastrophic devastation”. But we have suffered a huge amount of damage, ‘he added, mentioning the thousands of residents’ with life turned upside down.

The hurricane, which was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday afternoon, made landfall in Category 4 (of 5) around 1 a.m. local (8 a.m. in Switzerland) at the coastal town of Cameron, near the border with Texas , in the Gulf of Mexico, with sustained winds of 240 km / h, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

That makes it the most powerful to hit Louisiana in over a century and a half, according to data compiled by a University of Colorado hurricane researcher.

Scenes of desolation

When daylight broke in the region, the first images showed the usual scenes of desolation: trees and power lines on the ground, collapsed buildings, torn roofs, streets flooded or covered with debris.

Of the six dead victims, recorded according to a provisional toll, four were killed by falling trees on their homes, one drowned after his boat was washed away in the cyclone and the last died of monoxide poisoning of carbon.

Nearly 800,000 people were without power Thursday afternoon in Louisiana and Texas, according to PowerOutage.us.

US President Donald Trump, regularly informed of the situation on the spot according to the White House, announced that he would visit Texas and Louisiana ‘on Saturday or Sunday’.

Neighboring Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Thursday morning on CBS that the rise in water had not been ‘as severe as initially expected’ and that ordered evacuations in coastal areas had likely helped save many lives.

More than 1.5 million people in total were under evacuation orders in Louisiana and Texas, one of the US states most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Laura, the twelfth hurricane of the season, had already caused significant flooding in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, killing at least 25 people.

/ ATS

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