At least 21 dead as Tropical Storm Laura lashes Haiti

Tropical Storm Laura has wreaked havoc in the impoverished Caribbean country of Haiti, piling debris onto residential streets and damaging homes.

At least 21 people were killed in total, mainly from flash flooding that turned the capital's roads into raging rivers, and 198 families were left homeless, according to the Haitian Civil Protection Office.

Five people were still missing on Tuesday, including a woman whose baby was already found dead after their car got stuck in flooding. Locals fear Laura is just a small preview of what is to come, with the hurricane season typically peaking in September.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott also warned Texans on Tuesday that Hurricane Laura would hit the state as a Category-3 storm and advised residents to comply with evacuation orders. Abbott said the state must also prepare for the possibility that Laura could strengthen to a Category-4 storm.

The hurricane was packing winds of 120 km per hour as it moved across the Gulf of Mexico, qualifying it as a Category-1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale for measuring hurricane intensity.

Laura was forecast to become a "major" hurricane of Category 3 or higher by Wednesday night as it approaches the US coast, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The storm was located about 825 kilometers southeast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, on Tuesday afternoon and moving to the west-northwest at 26 kilometers per hour, the NHC said. The hurricane was expected to make landfall late Wednesday (August 26) or early Thursday (August 27) along the Texas-Louisiana border, the NHC said.

SS