Hurricane Laura Live Updates: Evacuations Near Houston as Texas Prepares

The island’s Civil Defense Force oversaw the evacuation of 334,000 people. Thousands were moved to emergency shelters, but most took refuge with relatives. Though clustering may cause a spike in coronavirus infection rates, authorities said they felt their primary duty was to protect people in coastal areas from the storm.

Laura tore through banana and coffee plantations in the eastern part of the island and damaged crops in the province of Artemisa, a major source of root vegetables for the capital. Food supplies in Cuba have been dicey in recent months: over the last two years, sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have blocked gasoline deliveries from the country’s main ally, Venezuela, leading to a decrease in domestic food production.

Although people in Havana had braced for a tough night, the eye of the storm passed more than 60 miles to the west. As electricity flickered back on Tuesday morning, people in the capital awoke to a rainbow.

Laura is being compared to Hurricane Rita, which struck the region in 2005.

When Hurricane Laura comes ashore, Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana predicted on Monday, it could be similar in intensity to Hurricane Rita, which struck the Gulf Coast on a similar track about a month after Hurricane Katrina pounded New Orleans in 2005.

Rita made landfall on Sept. 24, 2005, as a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 120 miles an hour. It spawned an estimated 90 tornadoes as it pummeled Louisiana, Mississippi and eastern Texas, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm dumped as much as 15 inches of rain in some areas, and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. Storm-surge flooding swept as far east as the Florida Keys.

Rita was the third hurricane to reach Category 5 strength during the deadly and destructive 2005 storm season. It caused an estimated $10 billion in damage in the United States, according to the hurricane center; it killed at least seven people directly, with another 55 deaths attributed indirectly to the storm, including a bus accident during the evacuation in the Texas.

More than three million people tried to flee the Houston area and other parts of coastal Texas during a chaotic evacuation that choked major highways and stranded people in their cars. The evacuation become a case study for what to avoid in storm planning and hurricane response.