Hurricane Delta swamps weary Louisiana

The Category 2 storm made landfall on Friday and followed a path Hurricane Laura carved just six weeks earlier. Delta scattered piles of debris and peeled tarps off of roofs in Lake Charles, La., and other battered communities. High winds and rain knocked out power to about 740,000 homes and businesses in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, PowerOutage.us reported on Saturday.

What’s ahead for the hardest-hit areas? While Delta was a weaker storm than Category 4 Laura, it brought significantly more flooding. “Add Laura and Delta together and it’s just absolutely unprecedented and catastrophic,” Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said. “We are very concerned that with everything going in the country right now that this incident may not be on the radar nationally like it should be.”

Dig deeper: Read Bonnie Pritchett’s report on the shortage of disaster recovery volunteers because of the pandemic.

Editor’s note: WORLD has updated this report since its initial posting.