Hurricane Harvey roars toward Texas coastline
Category 3 beast threatens to be strongest storm to hit U. S. in more than a decade
Hurricane Harvey rumbled toward Texas on Thursday with winds of 85 mph, a menacing storm that could produce deadly flooding for several days.
Harvey is forecast to hit the Texas Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 mph. That would be the strongest hurricane to hit the USA in 12 years — since Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. A major hurricane is one that’s a Category 3 or above on the Saffir- Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.
An evacuation was ordered for the 60,000 residents of San Patricio County just north of Corpus Christi.
Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb and county officials may have stopped short of a mandatory evacuation, but they said residents
who stay are risking their lives.
“There will come a point during the storm where rescue operations will cease,” McComb said at a news conference Thursday. “Please don’t put our public safety officers at risk.”
McComb declined to say when that threshold would be reached, but he indicated it probably would come before the worst of the storm.
As Harvey strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning for a 280- mile stretch of the Texas coast on Thursday and forecast up to 25 inches of rain over the next week. About 700,000 people live where a hurricane warning was in effect, roughly half of them in the Corpus Christi area.
Forecasters expected the storm to be either slow- moving or stationary for three to five days, which heightened concerns about heavy rainfall. If that materializes, the National Weather Service in Houston said, some areas could see lifethreatening flash flooding.
“Since Harvey is forecast to stall, we expect 10 to 20 inches of rain over a large part of southern and eastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana from Friday into early next week,” AccuWeather hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski said.
The hurricane warning covers an area from Port Mansfield near the Mexican border to Sargent, 70 miles from Galveston.
“Impacts from Harvey will be tremendous in terms of displacement of people, property and economic loss and travel and freight disruptions,” AccuWeather’s Marshall Moss said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the hurricane was “certainly something ( President Trump) is aware of.”
She said the lack of a permanent Homeland Security secretary to replace new chief of staff John Kelly would not inhibit the response.
“There’s certainly someone at the helm,” she said. “You have acting Secretary Elaine Duke, who’s watching this closely and is involved in the process along with the FEMA director.”
In Kelly, Sanders said, there is “no better chief of staff for the president during the hurricane season.”
As the storm moved toward the mainland, Royal Dutch Shell, Anadarko Petroleum and Exxon Mobil evacuated workers and reduced production of oil and gas at some facilities.
The Gulf of Mexico is home to about 17% of American crude oil output and 5% of dry natural gas output, according to the U. S. Energy Information Administration.
More than 45% of the nation’s oil refining capacity is along the Gulf Coast.
As of 5 p. m. ET, the storm’s center was about 305 miles southeast of Corpus Christi and was moving north- northwest at 10 mph.
The last hurricane to hit Texas was Ike in September 2008, which brought winds of 110 mph in the Galveston and Houston areas. Ike left damage of $ 22 billion.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the State Operations Center to raise its readiness level, making state resources available for possible rescue and recovery. The governor pre- emptively declared a state of disaster for 30 counties on or near the coast to speed deployment of state resources.
Emergency officials urged residents along the upper Texas coastline to move or prepare to move inland. Those in lowlying areas were advised to seek higher ground.
On South Padre Island, people filled sandbags and loaded them into cars and vans Wednesday to protect exposed homes and businesses. Others in the path of the storm sought out generators, plywood and other goods from hardware stores.
Rice farmers in coastal Matagorda County moved quickly to harvest their crops.
Houston airports expected to stay open, but airlines encouraged customers to change travel plans.