At least six dead as Hurricane Laura leaves trail of destruction on US Gulf coast
- Monster storm tears roofs off houses while raging chemical fire shuts down major motorway
- Expected ‘killer surge’ did not materialise, but Louisiana residents still reeling from widespread damage
The most powerful storm to hit Louisiana in 164 years left a trail of shattered glass, crumbled cinderblock and twisted facades across hundreds of square miles, rendering much of the area impassable on Thursday.
Fallen power lines and sheared roofs littered a wide swathe of Louisiana while a raging chemical fire spewed acrid smoke and shut a major motorway just hours after Hurricane Laura roared ashore.
A 10-foot (three-metre) steeple was plucked from a Pentecostal church in the small town of DeQuincy, 240 miles (386km) west of New Orleans, as residents huddled inside overnight to shelter from the monster storm.
Twenty-five miles away in Westlake, residents were warned to stay indoors and turn off air conditioners to protect themselves from the fumes billowing out of a chlorine fire at a plant that makes Comet cleanser and Clorox bleach.
Grenetta DuBrock fled her home near Lousiana’s coast as Laura was intensifying over the Gulf of Mexico. The 61-year-old thought evacuating north to DeQuincy would be enough to avoid the worst of the storm. It was not.