Laura hit with intensity the region has not seen in over a century

“The damage is extensive,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told CNN. “It appears now we have more structural damage from the wind” than storm surge.

More than 1,500 search and rescue personnel, plus 400 boats and high-water vehicles were headed Thursday morning to the worst-hit places, Edwards said. Winds were still too strong for helicopters to fly.

In East Texas, rescue teams were out in the Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange areas, Gov. Greg Abbott said, noting major evacuations “no doubt saved lives.” Further north, tornadoes were still a threat.

This building was damaged overnight by Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles.

At least one person has died as a result of the storm. A 14-year-old girl died when a tree fell on her home in Louisiana’s Vernon Parish, the governor’s office said.

In Lake Charles, Paul Heard left his house just as the storm was pulling part of the roof off around 1 a.m., he said.

He took shelter in his car. As he watched from 25 feet away, he “could see my roof was heaving up and down several inches.”

“There’s a lot of damage. People are going to need a lot of help around here,” Heard told CNN.

Flooding inundates the Crystal Beach and Galveston areas near Texas’ coast, aerial video from KRTK shows.

Laura tied with a hurricane from more than 160 years ago for the strongest storm to hit Louisiana. The 1856 hurricane also had winds of 150 mph when it made landfall, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller said.

More destruction is ahead: The storm’s center still is expected to keep hurricane strength into northwestern Louisiana and possibly into southern Arkansas.

Latest developments

Still a threat: As of 9 a.m. CT, Laura is a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph winds, headed north. Damaging winds and flooding rainfall still are in store for western Louisiana and eastern Texas. Arkansas and parts of Mississippi also are in store for heavy rainfall, the National Hurricane Center says.

Storm surge: Forecasters had warned of storm surges up to 20 feet. FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor said Thursday surges may not have been as high as feared. But the National Hurricane Center warned deadly surges still could happen along the coastline Thursday morning, with northerly winds still pushing ocean water inland.

Crawling out from a barricade to find the roof is gone

Details of damage were accumulating as the sun rose Thursday morning.

Water also lapped up against buildings in Sabine Pass, Texas, photos from Getty Images showed.

Flooding is seen Thursday in Sabine Pass, Texas.

In Louisiana’s Lake Charles, Tolor White Jr. had dozed off while doing a crossword puzzle under a makeshift “barricade” made of a table and some mattresses. He awoke around 1:15 a.m. to a loud noise, he said.

Part of his roof had been torn off. Water dripped into one of his rooms, and wind had blown out some of his windows.

“I slept through most of it,” he said.

Brandon Clement, a storm chaser, was in a Lake Charles parking lot early Thursday when he saw a RV topple over.

“You could actually hear (the storm) coming … I could see it racing across the parking lot at me … and the RV just went,” he said.

This RV overturned early Thursday in Lake Charles.

Calcasieu Parish, where the city of Lake Charles is located, has about 100,000 residents who were at risk of flooding, parish spokesman Tom Hoefer told CNN.

Just west of Lake Charles, in the city of Sulphur, John Burch’s home lost power shortly after 1:30 a.m.

“There’s a tree down in every person’s yard,” Burch said.

Mat Mcgee told CNN he was near the eyewall of Hurricane Laura when he saw the metal building in front of his barge get ripped apart in Hackberry, Louisiana.

The wind pulled off the roof, the door and knocked over the tower on the site.

John Burch stood in his street with neighbors as the storm’s eye passed overnight, he told CNN.

The fate of inland residents continued to be a top worry Thursday morning for retired US Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who coordinated the joint military response in 2005 to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, then weeks later aided the response to Hurricane Rita, which hit around the same places as Laura.

“We might have gotten a break on the projected surge (from Laura), but I would suspect much of Cameron (Parish along the coast) is pretty bad torn up, particularly all the reconstruction that had happened since Hurricane Rita,” Honore told CNN from Baton Rouge.

Honore feared many who live away from the coast had opted to ride out Laura at home, he said.

“In Lake Charles, a lot of people could be hurt, and as you go further north into Beauregard Parish and up toward Fort Polk, a lot of folks live up there in mobile homes, and I only fear — knowing that Cameron was fully evacuated, a big effort in Calcasieu (Parish) and Lake Charles to get people to evacuated — I hope the same was done further north because this could be very devastating … where people don’t live in very sturdy homes,” he said. “That is my biggest concern.”

Daoith Porm, left, and Bunsant Khov, board their business as Hurricane Laura nears.

Storm surge still a threat

Even though Laura’s center was well inland by dawn Thursday, storm surge still was happening behind it, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.

Especially in the storm’s southwest quadrant, winds from the south still are pushing water inland, Myers said.

The National Hurricane Center had warned storm surge reaching up to 20 feet could be among Laura’s greatest threats, along with winds that have prompted a rare “extreme wind warning” for Lake Charles, Beaumont, Port Arthur and other nearby locations.