Hurricane Laura batters the Louisiana coastline with an intensity the region has not seen in over a century

(CNN) — An extremely powerful Hurricane Laura is ripping apart portions of Louisiana and eastern Texas, roaring ashore initially as a Category 4 storm and tearing up roofs while knocking out power for hundreds of thousands.

Laura — the region’s strongest storm in over a century — made landfall at about 1 a.m. CT with sustained winds of 150 mph. By 7 a.m. CT, the storm still was raging over inland Louisiana at Category 2 strength, with winds of 100 mph.

Pictures and interviews reveal widespread wind destruction in places like Louisiana’s Lake Charles city, some 35 miles north of the coast. Across the city, roofs are damaged, trees are snapped, twisted and broken; steel poles and lampposts are bent; street signs are torn from the ground.

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Wind gusts of more than 120 mph raked that area intermittently for an hour overnight, CNN’s meteorologists say.

“The damage is extensive,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told CNN. “It appears now we have more structural damage from the wind” than storm surge.

Paul Heard left his Lake Charles house just as the storm was pulling part of the roof off around 1 a.m., he said.

He took shelter in his car. As he watched from 25 feet away, he “could see my roof was heaving up and down several inches.”

“There’s a lot of damage. People are going to need a lot of help around here,” Heard told CNN.

Laura tied with a hurricane from more than 160 years ago for the strongest storm to hit Louisiana. The 1856 hurricane also had winds of 150 mph when it made landfall, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller said.

More destruction is ahead: The storm’s center still is expected to keep hurricane strength into northwestern Louisiana and possibly into southern Arkansas.

Latest developments

Still a threat: As of 7 a.m. CT, Laura is a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph winds, headed north. Damaging winds and flooding rainfall still are in store for western Louisiana and eastern Texas. Arkansas and parts of Mississippi also are in store for heavy rainfall, the National Hurricane Center says.

Storm surge: Forecasters had warned of storm surges up to 20 feet. FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor said Thursday surges may not have been as high as feared. But the National Hurricane Center warned deadly surges still could happen along the coastline Thursday morning, with northerly winds still pushing ocean water inland.

Power goes out: More than 547,000 customers in Texas and Louisiana were without power Thursday morning, according to PowerOutages.us.

Crawling out from a barricade to find the roof is gone

Details of damage were accumulating as the sun rose Thursday morning.

Wide portions of Crystal Beach, Texas, have been flooded. Water flowed over fields and roads, video from CNN affiliate KTRK showed.

Water also lapped up against buildings in Sabine Pass, Texas, photos from Getty Images showed.

In Louisiana’s Lake Charles, Tolor White Jr. had dozed off while doing a crossword puzzle under a makeshift “barricade” made of a table and some mattresses. He awoke around 1:15 a.m. to a loud noise, he said.

Part of his roof had been torn off. Water dripped into one of his rooms, and wind had blown out some of his windows.

“I slept through most of it,” he said.

Brandon Clement, a storm chaser, was in a Lake Charles parking lot early Thursday when he saw a RV topple over.

“You could actually hear (the storm) coming … I could see it racing across the parking lot at me … and the RV just went,” he said.

Mat Mcgee told CNN he was near the eyewall of Hurricane Laura when he saw the metal building in front of his barge get ripped apart in Hackberry, Louisiana.

The wind pulled off the roof, the door and knocked over the tower on the site.

The fate of inland residents continued to be a top worry Thursday morning for retired US Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who coordinated the joint military response in 2005 to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, then weeks later aided the response to Hurricane Rita, which hit around the same places as Laura.

“We might have gotten a break on the projected surge (from Laura), but I would suspect much of Cameron (Parish along the coast) is pretty bad torn up, particularly all the reconstruction that had happened since Hurricane Rita,” Honore told CNN from Baton Rouge.

Honore feared many who live away from the coast had opted to ride out Laura at home, he said.

“In Lake Charles, a lot of people could be hurt, and as you go further north into Beauregard Parish and up toward Fort Polk, a lot of folks live up there in mobile homes, and I only fear — knowing that Cameron was fully evacuated, a big effort in Calcasieu (Parish) and Lake Charles to get people to evacuated — I hope the same was done further north because this could be very devastating … where people don’t live in very sturdy homes,” he said. “That is my biggest concern.”

Storm surge still a threat

Even though Laura’s center was well inland by dawn Thursday, storm surge still was happening behind it, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.

Especially in the storm’s southwest quadrant, winds from the south still are pushing water inland, Myers said.

The National Hurricane Center had warned storm surge reaching up to 20 feet could be among Laura’s greatest threats, along with winds that have prompted a rare “extreme wind warning” for Lake Charles, Beaumont, Port Arthur and other nearby locations.

The coronavirus pandemic complicated evacuations. Due to safety concerns associated with the Covid-19 outbreak, officials sent evacuees to hotel rooms, said Mike Steele, a spokesman for the state’s office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Laura is the seventh named storm to make landfall in the US so far this year, a record for the most to do so before the end of August. There have been four tropical storms and three hurricanes.

Tens of thousands at risk of flooding

Calcasieu Parish, where the city of Lake Charles is located, has about 100,000 residents who are at risk of flooding, parish spokesman Tom Hoefer told CNN.

The focus Thursday will be on saving lives and transporting people to shelters, he said. The Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Office said evacuation was key because authorities are concerned about rescue efforts.

“Those choosing to stay and face this very dangerous storm must understand that rescue efforts cannot and will not begin until after storm and surge has passed and it is safe to do so. Please evacuate, and if you choose to stay and we can’t get to you, write your name, address, social security number and next of kin and put it a Ziploc bag in your pocket,” the office said in a statement. “Praying that it does not come to this.”

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