HARVEY'S HERE
Category 4 hurricane threatens wide path of destruction on coast
Hellish winds and machine-gun rains were pummeling this coastal city of 320,000 Friday evening as rescue officials and residents who remained in their homes braced for the arrival of the worst hurricane to hit the U.S. in at least 12 years.
Five hours before its expected landfall late Friday or early Saturday, Hurricane Harvey was upgraded to a Category 4 storm, with winds approaching 150 miles per hour. As dusk approached, the streets of Corpus Christi were largely empty as the last of the Coastal Bend’s evacuating residents made their way up Interstate 37 to San Antonio and other points north.
According to power provider AEP Texas, more than 42,000 residents had lost power by 6 p.m., a number that was expected to grow dramatically overnight.
Forecasters said Harvey would likely make landfall just north of Corpus Christi, perhaps sparing the city from the worst of its fury, but the monster storm is expected to bring danger to a wide swath of Texas on three fronts: storm surges of up to 12 feet that posed particular danger to barrier island communities like Port Aransas; torrential downpours of as much as 3 feet that threaten Houston and Central Texas; and winds in excess of 150 miles per hour, as well as the possibility of tornadoes.
As many as 16 million residents are in the path of Harvey’s impact.
The National Weather Service adjusted its forecast Friday, predicting that the storm could churn over the Coastal Bend region for longer than anticipated, perhaps through the middle of next week. Warning of life-threatening flooding, the service added that the middle and upper Texas coast could see up to 40 inches of rain through next Wednesday and 5 to 15 inches from far South Texas through the Hill Country and into central Louisiana, the
service added.
Experts said the storm could lead to historic flooding and leave some areas unreachable for days.
“In terms of economic impact, Harvey will probably be on par with Hurricane Katrina,” University of Miami senior hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy told The Associated Press. “The Houston area and Corpus Christi are going to be a mess for a long time.”
Gov. Greg Abbott, who visited a San Antonio shelter Friday and repeated his warning to residents in low-lying areas to heed mandatory evacuations, formally requested a disaster declaration from the federal government in advance of Harvey’s landfall in order to access federal funds.
Abbott also issued a proclamation Friday suspending collection of state and local hotel and motel occupancy taxes for people seeking shelter from the hurricane or for emergency personnel participating in relief operations.
Thousands of residents in Corpus Christi and surrounding communities did heed authorities’ increasingly desperate calls to evacuate. Estimates on the number of residents who refused to leave varies.
In Port Aransas, best known as an idyllic beach community, nearly all residents had evacuated by Friday morning, said Rickey Dailey, spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, which operates the ferry service to the island. In Rockport, where the storm is expected to make landfall, officials estimated just 60 percent of residents evacuated.
Those who stayed behind boarded up homes, emptied grocery shelves of water and food, and hoped to stay safe through a night sure to bring widespread power outages and flooded roads.
David Burkhardt, an operator at a municipal water treatment plant in San Patricio County, was among those who decided to remain, saying he feared not being able to return in time for his Monday shift. “If people lose water service, you will need to get that back as soon as possible,” said Burkhardt, who lives in Portland, east of Corpus Christi.
On Friday afternoon Burkhardt, 63, watched the gathering storm from his open garage. “I’m just sitting here watching until it gets too gnarly, then I’m going inside,” he said. “I’m concerned being in the house alone, but time will tell.”
Burkhardt said that although he lives just about a quarter of a mile from the water, he feels safer because his neighborhood is 32 feet above sea level, higher than surrounding low-lying areas.
CC Jackson, 64, said she was preparing to ride out the storm in her trailer home in Aransas Pass, a town on the tip of Redfish Bay that, like Portland, was under a mandatory evacuation order.
“I just hope it doesn’t get too far over the floorboards,” Jackson said Friday morning as she lined up at a self-service ice dispensary. “I have a lot of good rain gear and a lot of faith in the future.”
Jackson, who lives in a trailer park not far from the water, wasn’t alone. By late Friday morning, the dispensary had drawn a crowd of folks who had decided to hunker down despite a mandatory evacuation order.
Jackson, who said she had been “scared to death” by news reports, said that if the storm got bad enough she could go to a friend’s second-floor apartment above a store. “I’d rather stick around than be caught in traffic and the road rage,” she said.
Other residents decided to flee after the likely impact of Harvey grew clearer Friday. Robert Aranda, 58, who has to use a wheelchair, got on one of the last city of Corpus Christi buses ferrying those without transportation to shelters in San Antonio and Austin.
“With a disability, it’s just difficult,” Aranda said of the evacuation.
Aranda said the hurricane gave him flashbacks to the last monster hurricane to have hit the Coastal Bend: Hurricane Celia in 1970. That storm killed more than a dozen people, left thousands homeless, knocked out power for weeks and razed entire neighborhoods.
Residents here are hoping that the region is better prepared for Harvey, though the storms share some eerie similarities. Celia also made landfall near Rockport and, like Harvey, strengthened considerably in its final days and hours before reaching the coast.
Harvey had been a disorganized tropical depression after it crossed the Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday, but it quickly fed on the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and gained more defined circulation. The relative lack of warning, FEMA Administrator Brock Long said Friday, only gave authorities a “small window” to mobilize evacuations.
Up the coast in Victoria, expected to receive a torrential drenching, the streets in and out of the city were mostly empty Friday evening.
But Mike Jeanneret, 47, who lives just outside that city, said his family is staying put because his wife is a nurse at a local hospital.
“We have two dogs and things to take care of,” Jeanneret, a mechanic, said. “We just got everything tied down, and we’re hoping for the best.”
Jeanneret has two children, the eldest of which was sent home from Texas A&M’s Corpus Christi campus because of Harvey. Jeanneret said they weathered Hurricane Claudette in 2003 and, with a generator and plenty of supplies, are prepared to do the same for Harvey.
“I have plenty of beer, I know that — and water,” he said.