Hurricane Laura has turned deadly, killing a 14-year-old girl as it unleashed widespread destruction and devastating floodwaters after slamming early Thursday into Louisiana as a ferocious Category 4 monster — before losing steam and weakening to a still dangerous Category 1 storm, according to officials.

“Damaging winds and flooding rainfall spreading inland over western and central Louisiana,” the National Hurricane Center said in a 9 a.m. EST update. “Life-threatening storm surge continues along much of the Louisiana coastline.”

NHC chief Ken Graham said that Laura is expected to remain a hurricane until it nearly reaches Arkansas.

“We expect Hurricane Laura to still be a hurricane even when you get up to Shreveport, right on the Arkansas border,” he said on CNN.

Floodwaters are not expected to recede for several days and will cause “catastrophic damage,” according to an NHC’s advisory, as Laura was centered about 30 miles north-northwest of Lake Charles and moving north at 15 mph.

Hurricane-force winds and violent wind gusts were spreading well inland into parts of eastern Texas and western Louisiana, officials said.

As of 9:30 a.m., there were at least 603,331 customers without power in Louisiana and Texas, according to PowerOutage.US.

Forecasters had predicted that the highest storm surge — up to 20 feet — could penetrate up to 40 miles inland from the coastline.

Maximum sustained winds had slowed to 120 mph, and then to 100 mph, but were still powerful enough to blow out windows in Lake Charles’ 22-floor Capital One Tower, social media images showed.

A 14-year-old Louisiana girl became Laura’s first fatality when a wind-swept tree fell on her home, Gov. John Bel Edwards said on MSNBC, the Washington Examiner reported.

Edwards and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott credited the evacuations of thousands of people for preventing deaths in Texas.

Both governors said the storm surge appears to not have been as bad as they feared.

Abbott said the surge hit the east Texas communities of Port Arthur, Beaumont and Orange “pretty hard” overnight and the eye of the hurricane has continued to move about 100 miles north along the Texas-Louisiana state line.

A White House statement warned that “Hurricane Laura remains a deadly hurricane with devastating coastal storm surges, destructive winds, and flash flooding.”

“President Trump is committed to deploying the full resources of the Federal Government to rescue those in distress, support those in the region affected, and restore disruptions to our communities and infrastructure,” the statement said.

Video posted on Twitter by storm chaser Reed Timmer showed the destruction downtown, where the wind blew windows out of buildings.

Twitter user Zack Fradella also posted a photograph showing the collapse of the tower of Lake Charles TV station KPLC.

The NHC said the storm, which intensified rapidly Wednesday before plowing into land, was packing winds of 150 mph when it came ashore at 1 a.m. near Cameron, a 400-person community about 30 miles east of the Texas border.

“The eyewall of Laura will continue to move inland across southwestern Louisiana during the next several hours,” the NHC said in an early bulletin. “TAKE COVER NOW!”

The area where Laura slammed into the coast is marshy and particularly vulnerable to the surge of ocean water.

“This is one of the strongest storms to impact that section of coastline,” said David Roth, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, Reuters reported.

“We worry about that storm surge going so far inland there because it’s basically all marshland north to Interstate 10. There is little to stop the water,” he said.

The floodwaters could surge inland from between Freeport, Texas, and the mouth of the Mississippi River, and could raise water levels as high as 20 feet in parts of Louisiana’s Cameron Parish, the NHC said.

“To think that there would be a wall of water over two stories high coming onshore is very difficult for most to conceive, but that is what is going to happen,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott told reporters.

“The word ‘unsurvivable’ is not one that we like to use, and it’s one that I’ve never used before,” Schott said of the surge.

Officials say search-and-rescue missions would begin as soon as conditions allow, along with damage assessments.

In a southwestern Louisiana parish, an official said some people who did not evacuate were requesting assistance.

Tony Guillory, president of Calcasieu Parish’s police jury, took cover in a Lake Charles government building that was shaking from the storm early Thursday as phones rang.

“People are calling the building but there ain’t no way to get to them,” he said over the phone, adding that he hoped those stranded could be rescued later Thursday.

Port Arthur, an oil-refining Texas city of some 54,000 residents just west of where Laura made landfall, was a ghost town Wednesday night, with just a couple of gas stations and a liquor store open for business, according to Reuters.

“People need their vodka,” said cashier Janaka Balasooriya.

Port Arthur resident Eric Daw, who filled up his car at one of the few gas stations still open, told Reuters he had wanted to evacuate earlier but lacked money for gas as he was waiting on a disability payment.

Daw was driving to a shelter in San Antonio, 4½ hours away, where instead of worrying about Laura, he has to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, echoing concerns of many other people.

“They say we are all supposed to socially distance now,” he said. “But how am I supposed to socially distance in a shelter?”

Laura also was expected to spawn tornadoes Thursday over Louisiana, far southeastern Texas and southwestern Mississippi and dump as much as 10 inches of rain over the region, the NHC said.

With Post wires