What it looked like after Hurricane Laura struck the Gulf Coast
Hurricane Laura made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, last night, bringing destructive 150 mile per hour winds to the area near the Texas border. Laura is one of the strongest storms to hit Louisiana on record, and the damage it brought to Gulf Coast communities is just beginning to come to light.
The city of Lake Charles, Louisiana was evacuated the day before, and residents returned to a terrifying sight: a thick cloud of smoke billowing out of a factory across the lake, the result of a chemical fire at Biolab, a company that produces chlorine for swimming pools. The surrounding area is now under shelter-in-place orders. But with the windows, doors, and roofs of many buildings in the area blown out from the storm, some residents may not have a safe space to shelter in.