Trump declares national disaster as Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas

GALVESTON, Texas — Hurricane Harvey became the first major hurricane in 12 years to hit the mainland United States, coming ashore Friday night in Texas as a Category 4 storm with 130-mph winds and threatening millions of people along the Gulf Coast with catastrophic flooding and torrential rains.

As the storm’s center neared landfall close to Corpus Christi, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he had granted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for a disaster declaration, “which unleashes the full force of government help!”

Abbott warned that the storm is a “very complex and dangerous” hurricane that could bring devastating flooding along the middle Texas coast as Harvey is expected to dump more than 2 feet of rain over parts of the region.

“It’s a hurricane that’s going to prove more dangerous than many hurricanes,” Abbott said. “We are going to be dealing with immense, really record-setting flooding in multiple regions across the state of Texas.”

A hurricane warning was in effect along a wide stretch of the coastline from Port Mansfield to Sargent, spanning a region home to about 4 million people. An additional 12 million, many in the major cities of Houston and San Antonio, are under a tropical storm warning.

Heavy bands of rain began pounding the coast near Galveston on Friday afternoon as a stream of vehicles flowed out of the seaside resort city.

Few people were still out on the roads as the hurricane approached and the area fell under a tornado warning, with some drivers taking shelter in the lobbies of area hotels that have remained open.

The National Weather Service office in Corpus Christi cautioned that the extreme rainfall could be “devastating to catastrophic,” and that the current threat to life and property was “extreme.” Rivers and tributaries could overflow their banks and streets and parking lots become “rivers of raging water with underpasses submerged,” the weather service said.

A major hurricane poses the first major test of emergency response for the Trump administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new administrator, Brock Long, who was confirmed in June.

Trump plans to travel to Texas next week, homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said. Speaking to reporters at a news briefing Friday, he added that federal officials had significantly improved their ability to respond to natural disasters since Hurricane Katrina caused widespread flooding in New Orleans in 2005, and the president seemed determined to provide help to Texas in the face of the storm.

Harvey intensified in the central Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning, reaching Category 3 hurricane status by early afternoon Friday and Category 4 status by early Friday evening. Hours later, the storm was reaching landfall near Corpus Christi and moving northwest at about 10 mph.

As it moves inland, Harvey is likely to slow down and meander near the coastline, dropping up to 35 inches of rain across some parts of Texas through Wednesday.

Before Harvey, the last Category 4 hurricane to hit the United States was Charley, which struck Florida in 2004. The most recent major hurricane to make landfall was Wilma, a Category 3 storm that hit Florida the next year.

In 2016, thousands of residents along the Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coasts evacuated as Hurricane Matthew was forecast to make landfall as a Category 4 storm. However, the hurricane veered east and weakened to a Category 2 as it skirted along the coast.

Historically, slow-moving tropical storms and hurricanes have caused some of Texas’ most severe flooding. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison hovered above the Houston area for days, dumping up to 30 inches of rain — as much as 80 percent of the area’s average annual rainfall over some neighborhoods.

The last hurricane to hit the Texas coast — Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm that wreaked havoc after making landfall in Galveston in 2008 — killed at least 37 people and resulted in more than $30 billion in damage.

Abbott had urged residents of low-lying and coastal areas — even residents of Houston, where Mayor Sylvester Turner has not called for evacuations — to evacuate before Harvey made landfall.

“What you don’t know and what nobody else knows right now is the magnitude of flooding that will be coming,” the governor said.

At the Hertz car rental outside Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, arriving customers snapped up trucks and SUVs in preparation for the days of catastrophic rains projected to come.

After learning she was speaking to a journalist, one of the rental workers paused and asked, in a grim voice, “Do you think they’re telling the truth about how bad it’ll get?” Several other employees also stopped and craned their necks to listen.

Local officials and news outlets have had to bat down a viral social media message that circulated widely among Texans on Thursday warning that the storm would be far worse than officials were already predicting.

“Ignore unfounded, unsourced weather predictions that have needlessly frightened Houstonians,” Turner, the mayor, tweeted. “Get info from trusted outlets.”

Not everybody was running from the storm.

One married couple, Tom Miller, 48, an IT analyst, and Ron Marcus, 55, a food service manager, both of Bartlesville, Okla., had been watching the forecast for days and noted the hurricane coming toward Texas.

They decided to beat it to Galveston — where they had been planning to catch a cruise where Miller’s niece was expecting to get married. Veterans of Tornado Alley, they figured they could wait out a hurricane, with its weaker-than-a-tornado winds.

“We headed out last night and drove straight through (the night) to get here,” arriving around 4 a.m. Friday morning, said Miller.

“Of course, after getting here,” Miller added sheepishly, “it’s kind of growing in intensity.”

Along the southern edge of Galveston, foaming waves marched furiously toward the shore, where a TV cameraman and an anchor stood in the sand to record the oncoming wrath of the storm.

They weren’t alone. Three friends — James Hibberts, 19, of Clear Lake, Branden Castillo, 26, of Webster, and William Mead, 21, of Clear Lake — moseyed around nearby in the sand, barefoot, hoping to get on TV.

Like other sightseers that had not fled the area, they weren’t intimidated by the storm.

“Danger is not a factor in these parts,” Mead said, smiling, as the men’s shirts whipped around in a fierce wind.

The men were hoping to skimboard on one of the main roads running along Galveston’s gulf shoreline, but it hadn’t flooded yet.

Even they were amazed when they saw two surfers paddle out and try to ride the waves, which raged unpredictably toward the beach.

Regretfully, Mead said he couldn’t hang out all weekend. He has a job at Wal-Mart. “I gotta work tomorrow,” he said.

In Corpus Christi, despite evacuation orders and warnings that the storm would make landfall near their coastal town, Eddie Canales and his neighbors decided to stay.

Canales, 69, said the dire warnings ahead of Harvey’s arrival reminded him of Hurricane Celia, the last major storm he weathered at his grandparents’ home there in 1970. That storm tore a path of destruction through the seaside refinery community, a tourist mecca and working-class haven. Canales recalled how “ferocious” winds of 160 mph damaged 90 percent of downtown and destroyed about a third of homes.

His grandparents’ house was spared. But when they emerged to check on his uncle nearby, they found him sheltering with neighbors, his roof torn off by storm winds.

“The house next door was fine. That’s what Celia created: little twisters and squalls across the city,” said Canales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center. “Refinery tanks were bent like beer cans. Every single drive-in theater was flattened and gone. We didn’t have electricity at my mom’s house for 11 days, and there was a curfew. The whole city came together with barbecuing, and there were scalpers around selling ice.”

This time, he has a truck parked on high ground and neighbors with a gas generator and pontoon boat. He stocked up on water and other essentials, boarded up his ranch house’s windows and retreated inside Friday as the rain picked up.

“The wind is starting to gust up. I just checked all the windows to make sure they’re completely shut. I’ve got neighbors on both sides that are still here. We’re going to weather the storm,” he said. “It’s kind of dicey, but I can always go up to the attic if it gets to flooding” and escape to higher ground.

Local emergency managers divided the city into zones: the two closest to the port were considered most at risk for storm surge flooding, but Canales lives two zones farther inland, so he feels safer. His concern late Friday was Oso Creek about a block away, which was already swollen from recent rain. He planned to take a nap Friday afternoon, then stay up watching the latest season of “House of Cards” and the live drama outside, monitoring as the storm makes landfall around midnight.

A friend in Houston phoned to check on him.

“I’m hunkered down in Corpus — wish me well!” Canales said.

After pre-emptively declaring a state of disaster for 30 Texas counties, Abbott on Thursday activated about 700 members of the state National Guard.

Mandatory evacuation orders were already in effect across seven coastal counties. Mayor Joe McComb of Corpus Christi, Texas’ eighth largest city with a population of about 325,000, had encouraged residents to leave voluntarily.

With Houston forecast to see up to 20 inches of rainfall, local officials there were readying evacuation boats and high-water rescue vehicles.

On Thursday, Houston’s Office of Emergency Management urged residents to stockpile enough water, food and medication for five to seven days, secure anything that could be picked up by strong winds, and park vehicles off the streets. The Houston Independent School District, the largest public school system in Texas, canceled all classes Monday on what would have been the first day of school.