Hurricane Lili winds clocked at 135 miles an hour
Many homes are being evacuated along the low lying areas of southwest Louisiana as Hurricane Lili advances with renewed strength.
By Sarah McNamara
Staff Reporter

FORT WORTH — Packing 135 mph winds, Hurricane Lili continued to gain strength Wednesday toward the Gulf Coast as residents braced for the second major storm in a week.

According to the National Weather Service, Hurricane Lili intensified even further Wednesday afternoon and was classified as an extremely dangerous category four hurricane with increasing winds of 135 miles an hour and possible tidal surges of up to 12 feet.

Jesse Moore, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, said the last category four hurricane was Hurricane Iris, which hit Central America in 2001.

In Texas, officials advised the 250,000 residents of the Beaumont-Port Arthur area and 80,000 residents of neighboring Orange County to head inland early Wednesday. It was the area’s first countywide evacuation since 1992, when Hurricane Andrew threatened the coast before slamming into Louisiana.

Several other mandated evacuations were ordered Wednesday along the low-lying areas of southwest Louisiana.
Kaysie Hermes, a senior advertising/public relations major, is from Grand Lake, La., just outside Lake Charles. Residents of Lake Charles, which is 30 minutes north of the Gulf of Mexico, were evacuating Wednesday.

This past weekend Hermes was in Lake Charles with her family water-skiing, an activity that seems ironic considering the recent weather forecast.

“It’s hard to imagine going home to nothing,” she said. “There is really nothing you can do living in Louisiana. People who live out there are used to this — it’s routine. People are scared, but it’s just something you have to expect.”

Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster declared a state of emergency as coastal residents of Louisiana were scrambling for higher ground and barricading their homes and businesses, less than a week after Tropical Storm Isidore blew through the region. That storm caused an estimated $100 million in damage.

Compared to Isidore, “Lili will have greater impact, but in a smaller area,” said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, Wednesday on CBS’ “Early Show.” “It’s not as large as Isidore, but it is much more powerful.”

Moore, the Fort Worth meteorologist, said he expects Lili to make landfall Thursday near parts of Southwest Louisiana, but if the storm moves westward, it could hit parts of southeast Texas.

At 2 p.m. Wednesday, the National Weather Service tracked Lili at about 325 miles south-southeast of New Orleans and expected to move northwest at 15 miles an hour.

Starlett Mitchell, a junior kinesiology major, from Beaumont, said her family evacuated Wednesday afternoon. Mitchell said her parents had to drive behind a school bus that was carrying the rest of her family out of the storm’s path.

Mitchell said while she is trying not to worry too much, it’s still hard.

“It’s scary not knowing what’s going to happen, whether or not I’m going to have a home to go to next weekend for fall break,” Mitchell said.

Brandon Harrison, a freshman premajor from Beaumont said he tried to contact his parents Wednesday, but could not get through. Harrison said he talked to many of his friends in Beaumont who were evacuating and heading for Houston and Waco.

“I don’t know how bad this storm is. I’ve been through stuff like this before, so I’m not too worried,” Harrison said.

Hurricanes are relatively rare in Texas in October. The last was Jerry in 1989, which killed three people in southeast Texas. The most recent hurricane in Texas was Bret, which packed 140 mph winds Aug. 22, 1999, as it came ashore in a sparsely populated area of Kenedy County, midway between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. That storm was blamed for four highway deaths in Laredo, scattered damage and flooding along the Rio Grande.

This story contains material by The Associated Press