Hurricane Laura, one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S., barreled across Louisiana on Thursday. Social media footage showed the severe wind and rain battering buildings and shaking sign posts in Lake Charles and Lafayette.
The hurricane sheared off roofs, killing at least six people and maintaining ferocious strength while carving a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
The hurricane’s top wind speed of 150 mph (241 kph) put it among the strongest systems on record in the U.S.
Not until 11 hours after landfall did Laura finally lose hurricane status as it plowed north and thrashed Arkansas, and even by Thursday evening, it remained a tropical storm.
Rotating blackouts hit more than 100,000 Houston-area homes and businesses after Hurricane Laura badly damaged transmission lines more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) away from the fourth-largest U.S. city.
Houston avoided a direct hit from Laura, which plowed ashore along the Louisiana-Texas border early Thursday. But the Category 4 storm caused extensive damage to transmission lines and towers that bring Houston power from the east, an Entergy spokesman said by email. He said it was too soon to know when the rolling outages would end.
More than 280,000 Texas homes and businesses remain without power following the storm, according to utility websites. In Louisiana, about 570,000 customers have lost electricity.
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