HURRICANE LAURA – August 2020

Hurricane Laura was a strong Category 4 hurricane at landfall, becoming the strongest storm to ever strike SW Louisiana and one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in US history. Laura devastated the coastal regions of Cameron Parish with a 17-foot storm surge and causing winds over 130mph throughout Lake Charles Louisiana. Severe damage occurred throughout Lake Charles with widespread catastrophic-level damage to residential and commercial building roofs and structures, as well as half of all matured trees either blown down, badly stripped of branches, or ‘broken over’. Due to the fast movement of the hurricane, hurricane wind-damage was experienced all the way into Arkansas. Power outages reached over 1 million customers with many areas remaining without power for several weeks.

Macro’s response to Hurricane Laura was our largest deployment by equipment and personnel numbers at the time, as well as setting our highest volume of daily fuel transactions with over 8,000 a day. A total of 245 trucks were deployed at the peak with over 600 personnel in the field. Project length was 3 months.