Even so, Laura was the most powerful storm on record to hit Louisiana, swamping Cameron Parish on the coast and moving north with devastating winds, which were measured gusting up to
CoreLogic, a data analytics firm in Irvine, Calif., estimated that the hurricane had caused insured losses of $8 billion to $12 billion. “The story here is going to be the wind damage,” said Curtis McDonald, a meteorologist with the firm. Of the total estimated damage, the firm said, just $500 million was probably attributable to the storm surge.
Much of the devastation has been concentrated in and around Lake Charles, a city of 78,000 heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry.
Rows of small businesses downtown were ransacked by the wind and rain. Windows of the tallest building in the city were blown out. Throughout the city, modest houses had shingles and siding shorn off, and trees that had stood for decades came crashing through roofs or spilled into impassable streets.
The destruction was especially brutal in Westlake, across the Calcasieu River from Lake Charles, with just shy of 5,000 residents and a skyline formed by the galvanized towers and flares of an oil refinery. The storm caused a fire on Thursday at a Biolab chemical plant in Westlake, prompting Governor Edwards to warn residents to “close your windows and doors and turn off your air conditioning units.”
Some residents acknowledged concerns over the community’s industrial surroundings and their unwelcome consequences. But those facilities also offered stable, decent-paying jobs, a kind of promise that might be tough to find in other places.