Texas hurricane causes havoc
‘Dangerous’ Harvey weakens as it moves inland over southern US
POP STAR Taylor Swift has a notable theme in her songwriting – revenge. In Picture to Burn (2006) she taunted a misbehaving ex: “I’m just sitting here, planning my revenge.” In Better Than Revenge (2010), she chastised another girl for stealing her boyfriend. In Mean (2010) she took
Hdown a music critic. In Bad Blood (2014), she brought an entire celebrity army to confront a frenemy.
So it’s not a surprise Swift’s new song, released this week, involves vengeance. In Look What You Made Me Do, off her coming sixth studio album Reputation, Swift is fired up. URRICANE Harvey has been downgraded to category 3 from the second-highest level, category 4, after making landfall for a second time in Texas, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
“Harvey weakening over land, but water levels continue to rise,” the hurricane centre said on its website.
The hurricane is expected to slow its forward motion and move slowly over south-eastern Texas during the next couple of days.
Harvey made its first landfall in Texas late on Friday after initially strengthening from a category 3 to a dangerous category 4 storm, with the US state’s governor warning of a “very major disaster”.
The National Hurricane Service said the eye of the storm moved ashore and over the northern end of San Jose Island about 6km east of Rockport at around 10pm, with wind speeds reaching more than 200km an hour.
The storm made its second landfall at 1am yesterday on the north-eastern shore of Copano Bay, with maximum sustained winds of 205km/h, the hurricane centre said.
The hurricane centre earlier posted a hurricane warning for Port Mansfield, Texas, to Sargent, Texas, a distance of nearly 500km.
The storm was expected to bring a surge of rising water moving inland. The hurricane centre said this could be as high as 4m.
“Harvey is bringing torrential rains and a dangerous storm surge that are creating a life-threatening flooding situation. Damaging hurricane-strength winds are also occurring,” the National Weatherservice said.
The service issued multiple warnings for the region, saying
“I don’t like your little games, don’t like your tilted stage, the role you made me play – of the fool. No, I don’t like you,” she sings, adding, “I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red underlined.”
Swift doesn’t say who she’s talking about but some suggest it’s Kanye West. – The Washington Post widespread destructive winds would result in damage similar to a tornado.
Hundreds of thousands of people were without power in coastal Texas early yesterday, local newspaper the Houston Chronicle reported, while there were reports of damage in the Rockport area, including the roof of a school.
“People were believed to be trapped in multiple buildings and some structures collapsed with people inside,” the chronicle reported, citing preliminary reports.
Millions of people along the US Gulf Coast live in the path of the storm, which threatens to be one of the worst to hit the area in 12 years and the first major natural disaster faced by President Donald Trump.
Governor Greg Abbott said he feared a “very major disaster” and urged those who lived in lowlying areas to evacuate. He said he was worried that people would be stranded by floodwaters without food, electricity and water, and it would be difficult to rescue them.
Mandatory evacuation orders were posted for some areas and Trump officially declared the hurricane a disaster, freeing up government funds for the response effort.
“At the request of the governor of Texas, I have signed the Disaster Proclamation, which unleashes the full force of government help,” Trump tweeted.
The president had spoken with Abbott and the governor of the neighbouring state of Louisiana, Trump said on Twitter, adding that he was monitoring developments closely.
Weather forecasters say Hurricane Harvey is likely to remain just inland through the weekend and continue to dump rain over south-eastern Texas for days. Rainfall accumulations between 38cm and 63cm were forecast.
Harvey “could remain a dangerous storm for several days”, said Tom Bossert, homeland security adviser to the president.
People in neighbouring Louisiana were also urged to remain alert as the storm progressed.
Harvey is drawing comparisons with Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 storm that hit the south-eastern US in late August 2005, killing about 1800 people.
Katrina unleashed severe flooding in New Orleans and nearby communities. Then president George W Bush was criticised for what many said was a slow response and a lack of empathy for Louisiana residents devastated by the storm.
Bossert said Katrina was a “massive event”, and he didn’t want to draw comparisons until Harvey had passed. – DPA