Hurricane Delta leaves at least four dead and knocks out power for hundreds of thousands | CNN

CNN  — 

Four people are dead in the aftermath of Hurricane Delta as remnants of the storm brought widespread rain to the US mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Monday.

An 86-year-old man died in St. Martin Parish after a fire started as he was fueling a generator in a shed, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Sunday. A 70-year-old woman died in Iberia Parish in a fire likely caused by a natural gas leak following damage from the storm, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.

In Florida, a 19-year-old from Illinois drowned in rough waters after being caught in a riptide in Destin on Saturday. A 49-year-old man drowned because of a rip current in in Escambia County approximately 5 miles east of Pensacola Beach, according to the National Weather Service’s office in Mobile, Alabama.

Meanwhile, large numbers of residents in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi woke up in the dark Monday morning after Delta made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane.

More than 140,000 people remained without power on Monday, three days after Delta made landfall. In Louisiana, 109,000 were without power as of Monday at 9 p.m. ET, while Texas had more than 21,000 and Mississippi had slightly more than 10,000, according to estimates from poweroutage.us.

The storm system spawned 10 tornado reports from the Gulf Coast to the Carolinas. At least two tornadoes in north and central Georgia on Saturday injured two people, according to the National Weather Service.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said 42 homes in the state were damaged by Delta and that a tornado touched down in Franklin County.

On Monday, vestiges of Delta brought gusty winds and rain to the northeast and mid-Atlantic.

Hurricane Delta was the 25th named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. Five hurricanes have made landfall in the US this year – the most since 2005 – and 10 named storms have hit this year in the continental US – the most since nine landfalls were recorded in 1916.

Delta hit Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula last Wednesday before making landfall with 100-mph winds near Creole, Louisiana, not far from where Laura made landfall less than two months ago.

In Lilburn, Georgia, a train derailed after heavy rain overnight. Firefighters found the train on its side, with 38 cars derailed, some of them on fire. The locomotive’s engineer and conductor were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, according to Gwinnett County Fire and Emergency Services.

One of the Georgia tornadoes was an EF1 with winds between 87 and 90 miles an hour that struck near Covington, about 35 miles east of Atlanta, and injured two people, according to the National Weather Service. It damaged a homeless shelter, displacing 30 people, the city’s emergency management director, Jody Nolan, told CNN.

The other was an EF0 that hit Pike County, some 51 miles south of Atlanta.

Northeast Georgia and the western portion of Virginia and the Carolinas could see up to 6 inches of rain, creating flash flooding risks across the region, the weather service said. The Central Appalachians and southern New Jersey could get drenched as well, forecasters said.

How to help storm victims

As Delta moved away from Louisiana, it left parts of the southwestern corner of the state with 17 inches of rain.

“Even if it wasn’t quite as powerful as Hurricane Laura, it was much bigger,” Edwards said Saturday. “Obviously, this was a very serious, very large and powerful storm that produced significant amounts of damage.”

Delta left a trail of “hazards like flooded roads, downed power lines and displaced wildlife” across the state, Edwards tweeted. He urged residents to remain vigilant.

More than a hundred roads and 35 bridges were closed, Edwards said Sunday, and traffic lights were out at many intersections.

Lake Charles, which faced the brunt of Hurricane Laura’s destruction, saw significant flooding after Delta passed through, and Delta’s flooding surpassed Laura’s, Mayor Nic Hunter said.

The city of 78,000 is still recovering from Laura’s 150-mph winds in August and now must deal with the double whammy of wind and flood damage, the mayor said, adding that Delta forced more residents to evacuate than did Laura.

Highways out of Lake Charles were packed as people fled Delta, and about 7,000 residents were still displaced from Laura when Delta hit, he said.

“Already we’re picking up the pieces, but we have quite a road ahead of us. There’s a lot of homes that were damaged from Laura, and now it’s just adding insult to injury,” the governor said Saturday.

More than 9,000 people are still in shelters in the state, Edwards said, but the vast majority – 8,230 – are evacuees from Hurricane Laura.

In Texas, a utility company said it could take up to a week to restore power to customers along the state’s southeastern border.

CNN’s Rebekah Riess, Hollie SIlverman, Melissa Alonso, Haley Brink, Michael Guy, Kay Jones, Gene Norman, Ray Sanchez, Alta Spells and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.