“It was just more than what you want to go through.”
Daniel Schaad chose to weather Hurricane Laura inside his cafe in downtown Lake Charles, but the devastation it brought impacted him to his core.
Laura made landfall at 1 a.m. as a Category 4 hurricane.
Schaad and many others agree that Laura may have had similarities to Hurricane Rita 15 years ago, but there was more more widespread and significant damage this time around. Schaad spent all of Thursday cleaning up after the roof to his building peeled away and landed down the street.
“It was pretty scary,” Schaad said. “You can hear a lot of tin scraping and glass breaking and it was the strongest driving wind you could ever imagine.”
Emergency personnel and power crews could be seen throughout the city as the rebuilding process began at a crawl. The 22-story Capitol One Tower had dozens of its windows blown out, the stone front wall of the First Baptist Church crumbled into pieces and series of downed power lines litter the streets.
Mike Tremont returned on Thursday and saw the damage to his property for the first time since he evacuated to Texas. A large and old tree was uprooted outside of his historic home and landed on top of a bed-and-breakfast next door.
“It’s weathered a lot of them [storms] so hopefully it’ll make it though this one too,” Tremont tearfully said.
Even though having to rebuild can be tough, Tremont said neighbors helping each other will always remain intact.
President Donald Trump said he plans to visit Louisiana and Texas this weekend to survey damage.
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