Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré visits Lake Charles

Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - It’s two days until the first anniversary of Hurricane Laura, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré observed the anniversary with a visit to Lake Charles.

The Katrina joint task force commander calls for increased federal aid for our area as it struggles to recover.

Honoré urges state and federal officials to build back better and smarter, and he called for, in his words, “canceling risky gas terminal projects in the severe hurricane zone.”

Honoré chose the battered Capital One tower and civic center sign as a backdrop for his remarks. He spoke against the Lake Charles LNG project which he says would be scarcely two miles from the upscale Graywood development.

“Engineers inside these have estimated that [if] that LNG plant explodes, it will have a fireball out to three miles from that plant,” Honoré said. “It will be equivalent to a bomb that was dropped in Japan.”

However, local industry officials say two operating LNG export facilities fared well in Hurricane Laura.

Executive Director of the Lake Area Industry Alliance Jim Rock says such facilities are built to weather storms.

“Don’t believe that’s going to happen because of the industry standards that they have to comply with,” Rock said. “Again, they’re very heavily regulated on how they can operate and when they can operate. and they make multi-billion dollar investments here. And they make those investments to operate for a long time, not for a short period of time.”

Honoré also spoke against industrial exemptions saying the public needs those tax dollars now for better schools and infrastructure.

Rock says the industries still pay large amounts of property taxes on non-production facilities, and he says they are an incentive to industry to locate here.

Honoré's full news conference can be found HERE.