NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate the Texas and Louisiana coasts Tuesday as Laura strengthened into a hurricane that forecasters said could slam into land as a major storm with ferocious winds and deadly flooding.
More than 385,000 residents were told to flee the Texas cities of Beaumont, Galveston and Port Arthur, and still more were ordered to evacuate low-lying southwestern Louisiana, where forecasters said more than 11 feet (3.35 meters) of storm surge topped by waves could submerge entire towns.
The National Hurricane Center projected that Laura will become a Category 3 hurricane before landfall, with winds of around 115 mph (185 kph), capable of devastating damage.
“The main point is that we’re going to have a significant hurricane make landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday,” National Hurricane Center Deputy Director Ed Rappaport said Tuesday.
Forecasters said ocean water could push onto land along a more than 450-mile-long stretch of coast from Texas to Mississippi. Hurricane warnings were issued from San Luis Pass, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana; and storm surge warnings from the Port Arthur, Texas, flood protection system to the mouth of the Mississippi River.
While cross winds ripped apart Marco, which still doused the region with heavy rain, there was little to keep Laura from turbocharging. Nearly all the computer simulations that forecasters rely on show rapid strengthening at some point in the next couple of days.
“The waters are warm enough everywhere there to support a major hurricane, Category 3 or even higher. The waters are very warm where the storm is now and will be for the entire path up until the Gulf Coast,” Rappaport said.
Laura passed Cuba after killing nearly two dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and 3 in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused intense flooding. The deaths reportedly included a 10-year-old girl whose home was hit by a tree and a mother and young son crushed by a collapsing wall.
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