Hurricane Laura: Gulf Coast Lashed by High Winds and Flooding

Hurricane Laura pounded the Louisiana and Texas coasts as it made landfall near Cameron, La., as a Category 4 storm early Thursday, delivering a barrage of 150-mile-an-hour winds and massive storm surge. The cyclone weakened as it moved inland, but remained destructive, with strong winds and heavy rain, and forecasters said it could spawn tornadoes.

At 8 a.m. Central time, the storm was centered between Leesville and Natchitoches, La., about 110 miles north of the Gulf Coast and 80 miles south of Shreveport, with hurricane-force winds extending out 60 miles in all directions, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm was moving northward at 15 miles an hour, with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles an hour.

Videos on social media showed the storm’s winds causing catastrophic damage to buildings and vehicles in their path. In Lake Charles, La., gusts blew out dozens of windows in a high-rise office building, the 22-story Capital One tower, and ripped the top off a sky bridge, tipped an R.V. on its side, and downed power lines. The whistling winds mimicked the alarm-like sounds that could be heard inside buildings, and tore trees from the ground.

Landfall came after officials in both states issued the gravest of warnings about the storm, which is among the strongest ever to hit the United States, according to data compiled by Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University who studies hurricanes. More than 1.5 million people in the coastal regions of Texas and Louisiana were under some form of evacuation orders.

Utility companies reported that about 404,000 customers in Louisiana and another 104,000 in Texas were without power Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.

The full extent of damage will not be known until the winds die down, the storm surge recedes and residents and officials can survey the wreckage.

Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said Thursday morning that his state had been hit with “extensive” damage to structures, particularly in the Lake Charles area. Search and rescue teams were on their way to Lake Charles, he said.