A damaged car sits outside a heavily damaged apartment complex in Rockport, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey struck the area. Photo / AP
A damaged car sits outside a heavily damaged apartment complex in Rockport, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey struck the area. Photo / AP
The wind was so intense in Rockport, Texas, that Cathy Dever thought it was a tornado - one that never seemed to end.
Dever fled her double-wide trailer and sought refuge in her neighbour's utility closet, clutching a small plastic bag that contained her son's phone number. If she didn't survive, she thought, at least she would be quickly identified.
For hours she waited, flinching as gravel and debris slammed against the storm shutters.
"It was so loud, you could hear it picking up rocks off the landscape," Dever, 59, said yesterday, just after Hurricane Harvey made landfall over this spit of land 48km northeast of Corpus Christi.
As residents emerged throughout the morning, US local officials and emergency responders across the region scrambled to assess the damage.
Hurricane Harvey slowed to a crawl yesterday, losing hurricane status but remaining strong, with torrential rains that could linger for days and cause catastrophic flooding.
Officials confirmed two fatalities - one in Aransas County and one in Harris County - and 14 injured as search and rescue operations continued in ravaged areas that have become largely inaccessible.
According to initial assessments, Corpus Christi was relatively spared a devastating impact, although half of the city lost electricity and roofs were blown off some buildings. But in Rockport, as well as in the adjoining towns of Fulton and Aransas Pass, there were scores of damaged or destroyed properties across communities of mobile homes, middle-class houses and holiday retreats. The Category four hurricane tossed mobile homes across streets and into neighbouring structures, chewed through brick buildings, peeled off roofs and aluminum siding.
Susan Stewart, 52, was wandering through deep puddles and navigating around downed power lines with her 31-year-old son as the two searched for food and cellphone service. She said they didn't have anywhere to evacuate to on Saturday so they stayed behind in their trailer. During the height of the storm, a tree crushed the porch.
"But the trailer is still standing," said Stewart. "It was all night of slam, bang, boom, but the trailer didn't hardly rock."
Boats are submerged in water at a dock in Port Lavaca, Texas. Photo / AP
In the coming days, forecasters believe the storm will meander south and east, and possibly slip back out over the hot Gulf waters, allowing it to restrengthen to some extent. All the while it will dump what could be historic quantities of rain.
The National Weather Service predicted total rain accumulations of 40 to 75cm in many areas, with as much as 100cm in isolated areas. Most ominously, the area around Rockport could see up to 150cm of rain to midweek.
"Please take the flooding threat seriously," the National Weather Service tweeted. "Remember, this is a multiday event . . . marathon not a sprint . . ."
At the entrance to the resort town of Port Aransas on Mustang Island, law enforcement blocked the road.
"It is too dangerous," one Port Aransas police officer said. "The roads are collapsing, and there are downed power lines everywhere." Officers began conducting a search-and-rescue operation for eight people reported missing, according to an Aransas County sheriff's deputy.
In Rockport, a town of about 10,000 residents, numerous buildings had collapsed. The wind shredded restaurants and stores. Shops and hotels also suffered major damage.
Yet the town and broader area appeared to escape the kind of catastrophic damage that Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall as a Category three storm, inflicted on the upper Gulf Coast in 2005. Despite predictions of a 1.8m to 3.6m storm surge, residents and emergency management officials say that amount of water never materialised.
What the hurricane lacked in water, though, it made up for in wind. The National Weather Service reported gusts as high as 212km/h at Port Aransas.
Long before the eyewall passed over the area, the wind sucked the windows out of nearly a dozen Aransas County Sheriff Department's vehicles.
A driver works his way through a maze of fallen utility poles in Taft, Texas. Photo / AP
Jimmy Kendrick, the Mayor of Fulton, said he and several emergency management officials used an armoured SWAT vehicle to try to escape from the wind.
"You couldn't even see the hand in front of your face" in the wind-driven rain, said Kendrick, who lost the Sears appliance store he owns. Two school gymnasiums also were destroyed, he said. Phone, electric and gas service have been crippled throughout the area.
Kendrick said it may be weeks before Fulton's evacuees can safely return. Those who refused to evacuate despite a mandatory order - about half the town's 2000 residents - could face days of suffering until relief supplies arrive. And they're complicating rescue efforts.
At a three-storey apartment complex near Fulton, firefighters rescued a man after the top storey pancaked onto the second floor. Kendrick said about a dozen people were injured there; many were treated at a makeshift hospital set up at the Aransas County Detention Centre.
"We've been devastated," said Rockport Mayor C.J. Wax. "There are structures that are either significantly disrupted or completely destroyed. I have some buildings that are lying on the street." Wax, who had evacuated to San Antonio, said residents who had left Rockport should not attempt to return. "There's no utilities. There's no food. Stay where you are, don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution."
On social media, residents and others who rode out the storm in Rockport shared images of downed trees, collapsed buildings and darkened streets.
The Texas storm
4 category hurricane Harvey has weakened to a tropical storm 2 people have been killed in Rockport and Houston 209 km/h winds when it came ashore, making it the strongest storm to hit Texas since 1961 230,000 people had their power knocked out 100cm maximum rain could fall in some areas 15cm of rain fell in three hours in Houston yesterday 1.6 km/h was how slow Harvey was moving as it dumps rain
