Texans fleeing Hurricane Harvey
Governor warns of ‘major disaster’
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas With time running out, tens of thousands of people fled Friday from the path of an increasingly menacing-looking Hurricane Harvey as it took aim at a wide swath of the Texas Gulf Coast that includes oil refineries, chemical plants and dangerously flood-prone Houston, the na-
tion’s fourth-largest city.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that the monster system would be “a very major disaster,” and the forecasts drew fearful comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest ever to strike the U.S.
“We know that we’ve got millions of people who are going to feel the impact of this storm,” said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman and meteorologist for the National Hurricane Center. “We really pray that people are listening to their emergency managers and get out of harm’s way.”
Fueled by warm Gulf of Mexico waters, Harvey grew rapidly, accelerating from a Category 1 early in the morning to a Category 4 by evening. Its transformation from an unnamed storm to a lifethreatening behemoth took only 56 hours, an incredibly fast intensification.
Landfall had been predicted for late Friday or early Saturday near Rockport, a fishing-and-tourist town about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi.
If it does not lose significant strength, the system will come ashore as the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in 13 years and the strongest to strike Texas since 1961’s Hurricane Carla, the most powerful Texas hurricane on record. Carla, which had wind gusts estimated at 175 mph and inflicted more than $300 million in damage, killed 34 people and forced about 250,000 people to evacuate.
Aside from the winds of 130 mph and storm surges up to 12 feet, Harvey was expected to drop prodigious amounts of rain — up to 3 feet. The resulting flooding, one expert said, could be “the depths of which we’ve never seen.”
Galveston-based storm surge expert Hal Needham said forecasts indicated that it was “becoming more and more likely that something really bad is going to happen.”
At least one researcher predicted heavy damage that would linger for months or longer.
“In terms of economic impact, Harvey will probably be on par with Hurricane Katrina,” said University of Miami senior hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. “The Houston area and Corpus Christi are going to be a mess for a long time.”
Before the storm arrived, home and business owners raced to nail plywood over windows and fill sandbags. Steady traffic filled the highways leaving Corpus Christi, but there were no apparent jams. In Houston, where mass evacuations can include changing major highways to a one-way vehicle flow, authorities left traffic patterns unchanged.
Federal health officials called in more than 400 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals from around the nation and planned to move two 250-bed medical units to Baton Rouge, La. Other federal medical units are available in Dallas.
Scientists warned that Harvey could swamp counties more than 100 miles inland and stir up dangerous surf as far away as Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, 700 miles from the projected landfall.
It may also spawn tornadoes. Even after weakening, the system might spin out into the Gulf and regain strength before hitting Houston a second time Wednesday as a tropical storm, forecasters said.
The storm posed the first major emergency management test of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The White House said Trump was closely monitoring the hurricane and planned to travel to Texas early next week to view recovery efforts. The president was expected to receive briefings during the weekend at Camp David.
Trump’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, Tom Bossert, said the administration was “bringing together the firepower of the federal government to assist the state and local governments, but the state and local governments are in the lead here.”
The last Category 4 storm to hit the U.S. was Hurricane Charley in August 2004 in Florida. Superstorm Sandy, which pummeled New York and New Jersey in 2012, never had the high winds and had lost tropical status by the time it struck. But it was devastating without formally being called a major hurricane.
Harvey would be the first significant hurricane to hit Texas since Hurricane Ike in September 2008 brought winds of 110 mph to the Galveston and Houston areas, inflicting $22 billion in damage.