Hurricane Laura, which hit the southwest corner of the state in September with 150-mile-per-hour winds, was one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall in Louisiana. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta weakened to a Category 2 by the time it reached land, but still battered towns that were still trying to recover from Laura.
In Westlake, La., a town of about 5,000 people near Lake Charles, Laura’s winds blew off roofs, caused a wall to cave in at City Hall, and snapped 20-foot-tall pines in half, said Robert Hardey, the mayor. Then came Delta.
“We were already beat up, with blue tarps everywhere, and it blew all the tarps away,” he said of the second storm. “There wasn’t one telephone pole standing, there wasn’t one business that didn’t get affected, there wasn’t one house that didn’t get some type of damage.”
Mr. Hardey said he expected it would cost $6 million, nearly half the town’s budget, to clean up the fallen trees and debris left by both storms. He said the federal government told him it would cover 75 percent of the cost, but the town needs more funds or it will go into serious long-term debt.
“I can’t take that hit,” Mr. Hardey said.
The high frequency of storms this year should remind residents and communities in hurricane-prone areas to continue to adapt, as climate change threatens to increase the damage from such storms, said Gary W. Yohe, the Huffington Foundation professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University.
Rather than rebuild a mall that flooded in a hurricane, for example, a town should consider building a park that can better absorb water from future storms, he said.
“Before you knee-jerk rebuild where you are, think about it for a little bit,” Professor Yohe said. “We don’t know where the next one is going to go, but I know there is going to be a next one. And there is a tendency that they’re getting worse.”
Rick Rojas and Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.
