Officials: Impact not like past storms
Millions of people have moved to Texas since the last hurricane struck the state in 2008 — many from places that don’t get hurricanes or even tropical storms — but local officials were equally worried Friday about how longtime residents would respond to the incoming weather.
That’s because Hurricane Harvey’s impacts likely will be distinct from those of past hurricanes, with widespread, prolonged flooding posing the greatest risk to the Houston region.
“Yes, this is a hurricane. Yes, this might have some winds for us and there’s limited evacuations going on, but this is really a flood event,” said Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Emergency Management. “For us, this event begins after landfall, really, because that’s when it’ll linger. That’s when it’ll stall, and that’s when we’ll see some of that deep tropical moisture just circulate over southeast Texas for potentially a few days.”
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett echoed Sanchez, encouraging residents to hunker down at home rather than attempting to evacuate and clogging roadways unnecessarily, as happened ahead of Hurricane Rita in 2005.
“This will be a rain event,” the judge said, not
a wind event. “The safest thing is to stay where you are and ride the storm out.”
Kemah resident Brandon LaMora, who stayed home through the last hurricane, Ike, planned to do just that, even as Gov. Greg Abbott irked local officials by saying he would evacuate if he lived in the Houston area.
“With the way Texas weather is, it changes quite often. I’m really not too worried about it,” LaMora said. “We’re going to get a lot of water.”
LaMora, who is 25 and studying for his aircraft maintenance license, said he thought the Houston area’s recent flood events had left residents better prepared to withstand Harvey.
“They understand not to drive when the streets are flooded when you can’t see the road,” he said.
Joffrion Thomas, a stayat-home-dad from Cypress, was even more relaxed.
“Every time a storm has come by, it hasn’t been that bad,” said Thomas, 27. “They always try to hype it up, try to scare you . ... I kind of started just trusting in myself and not the news.”
Over at the American Red Cross’s Houston headquarters, however, division disaster executive Charles Blake urged residents to take precautions.
“We’re making sure people understand that they need to pack a kit. They need to have provisions for at least seven days to be able to manage on their own — medicines and toilet paper and water,” Blake said. “And then they need to have a communications plan where they can connect with people.”
New Houstonian Jill Archibald, who moved here from Boston in March, said she started taking Harvey seriously on Thursday, when forecasts began projecting the storm would become a Category 3 hurricane before making landfall Friday.
“I only am nervous because my boyfriend’s family went through Katrina, and they said it started kind of similarly,” said Archibald, a 26-year-old public relations professional. “It wasn’t on anybody’s radar to be anything too crazy, and then all of a sudden it unfolded to be worse and worse.”