Hurricane Delta inflicts new damage on southern US states with top winds of 100mph
Video report by ITV News Reporter Jessica Savage
Delta has inflicted a new round of destruction on Louisiana as it struck communities still reeling after Hurricane Laura took a similar path just six weeks earlier.
Delta hit as a Category 2 hurricane, with top winds of 100mph but rapidly grew weaker.
By early Saturday, it dwindled to a tropical storm with 60mph winds.
Still, forecasters warned of danger from storm surge and flash floods across much of southwestern Louisiana and parts of neighbouring Texas.
Mayor Nic Hunter said tarps were flying off homes across the city.
“I’m in a building right now with a tarp on it and just the sound of the tarp flapping on the building sounds like someone pounding with a sledgehammer on top of the building,“ Mr Hunter said. ”It’s pretty intense.”
In the town of Lake Arthur, Delta’s winds peeled shingles off the roof of L’Banca Albergo Hotel, an eight-room boutique hotel in what used to be a bank.
“I probably don’t have a shingle left on the top of this hotel,” owner Roberta Palermo said as the winds gusted outside.
Ms Palermo said the electricity was out and she could see pieces of metal coming off the roof of a 100-year-old building across the street.
“There is a lot of power lines down all over the place, there’s … really deep water in certain spots,” said hotel guest Johnny Weaver. He had been out in the weather with his friends earlier and the friend’s car was stranded in the water.
Delta’s reach stretched as far west as Galveston, Texas, about 100 miles from where the storm struck Louisiana.
Two homes under construction were toppled by winds, as were some trees and signs in the area. Beach dunes flattened by earlier storms allowed storm surge to reach beneath some of Galveston’s raised beach houses.
Power outages in Louisiana and neighbouring Texas soared past 410,000 homes and businesses on Friday within hours of the storm coming ashore, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.
Delta, the 25th named storm of an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season, made the record books when it struck the Gulf Coast.
It was the first Greek-alphabet-named hurricane to hit the continental US. And it became the 10th named storm to hit the mainland US. this year, breaking a century-old record set in 1916, according to Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach.
The storm was projected to move into northern Mississippi on Saturday and then into the Tennessee Valley as a tropical depression.
Delta was the fourth named storm to strike Louisiana in 2020.
Tropical Storm Marco fizzled as it hit the southeast Louisiana tip just three days before Laura struck. And Tropical Storm Cristobal caused damage in southeast Louisiana in June.
Some who rode out Laura chose to hunker down again with Delta.
In Lafayette, about 75 miles east of Lake Charles, Jeanne-Marie Gove could hear debris hitting the front door of her apartment on Friday night and her patio gate banging open and shut.
“The wind is much worse than what Hurricane Laura brought,” Ms Gove said in a message on Twitter.
“The wind gusts are making the glass from our windows bow inward,” she added. “It’s pretty scary.”