At least three people in Louisiana have died as a result of Hurricane Laura after trees fell onto their homes.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said he’s received a report of the first US fatality from Hurricane Laura in Louisiana, a 14-year-old girl who died when a tree fell on her home.
.@LouisianaGov says he got the report of the first fatality from Hurricane Laura in Louisiana. A 14 year old girl who died when a tree fell on her home. We do expect that there could be more fatalities.
— Christina “MASK UP” Stephens (@CEStephens) August 27, 2020
CNN reported that a man in Jackson Parish died when a tree fell onto his home and a 60-year-old man in Iota, Louisiana died after a tree fell on him.
The governors of Louisiana and Texas say search and rescue teams are still looking, but so far they have not found widespread fatalities.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is crediting the evacuations of thousands of people for preventing deaths in Texas. Edwards says they are only beginning to assess the damage.
Both governors say the storm surge appears to have been not as bad as they feared.
Abbott said the hurricane’s storm surge hit the east Texas communities of Port Arthur, Beaumont and Orange “pretty hard” overnight and the eye of the hurricane has continued to move about 100 miles north along the Texas-Louisiana state line.
Hurricane Laura hit the US after doing significant damage in the Caribbean and taking the lives of nearly two dozen people. The storm gained strength over the Gulf of Mexico, and hit the Louisiana coast around 1 a.m. CT Thursday.