A powerful typhoon ripped through South Korea’s southern and eastern coasts with tree-snapping winds and flooding rains Thursday, knocking out power to more than 270,000 homes and leaving at least one person dead.
From the air, the destruction of Hurricane Laura is especially stark. Photographs from The Associated Press show entire neighborhoods surrounded by green-brown floodwater. A glassy high-rise stands with most of its windows missing. An airport hangar is shredded into ribbons of metal.
Hurricane Laura pounded the Gulf Coast for hours with ferocious wind, torrential rains and rising seawater as it roared ashore over southwestern Louisiana near the Texas border early Thursday morning. A 14 year-old girl is the first reported fatality.
Hurricane Laura is forecast to rapidly power up into a “catastrophic” Category 4 hurricane, even stronger than previously expected, as it churns toward Texas and Louisiana, swirling wind and water over much of the Gulf of Mexico.