Storm wallops Texas — thousands move inland
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Hurricane Harvey smashed into Texas late Friday, lashing a wide swath of the Gulf Coast with strong winds and torrential rain from the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade.
The National Hurricane Center said the eye of the Category 4 hurricane made landfall about 10 p.m. about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, bringing with it 130 mph sustained winds and flooding rains.
Harvey’s approach sent tens of thousands of residents fleeing the Gulf Coast, hoping to escape the wrath of an increasingly menacing storm set to slam an area of Texas that includes oil refineries, chemical plants and dangerously floodprone Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that the monster system would be “a very major disaster,” and the predictions drew fearful comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest ever to strike the U.S.
Reports of damage began to emerge from Rockport, Texas, a coastal city of about 10,000 people that was directly in the path of Harvey when it came ashore.
Rockport City Manager Kevin Carruth said by telephone that he had heard reports of a tree falling into a mobile home and roofs collapsing on houses. The city, about 31 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, had peak wind surges of more than 125 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Volunteer Fire Department Chief Steve Sims said there are about 15 volunteer firefighters at the city’s fire station waiting for conditions to improve enough for their vehicles to safely respond to pleas for help.
“There’s nothing we can do at this moment. We are anxious to get out there and make assessments, but we’re hunkered down for now,” he said.
Earlier Friday, Rockport Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Rios offered ominous advice, telling KIII-TV those who chose to stay put “should make some type of preparation to mark their arm with a Sharpie pen,” implying doing so would make it easier for rescuers to identify them.
In Corpus Christi, the major city closest to the center of the storm, wind whipped palm trees and stinging sheets of horizontal rain slapped against hotels and office buildings along the city’s seawall as the storm made landfall. Boats bobbed violently in the marina. It was too dark to tell whether any boats had broken their moorings.
Fueled by warm Gulf of Mexico waters, Harvey grew rapidly, accelerating from a Category 1 early Friday morning to a Category 4 by evening. Its transformation from an unnamed storm to a life-threatening behemoth took only 56 hours, an incredibly fast intensification.
Harvey came 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.