Surprise Hurricane batters Texas, storms Louisiana
Pastor Dale Morgan
Surprise Hurricane batters Texas, storms Louisiana*
MIAMI, Sept 13 (AFP) Sep 14, 2007
Hurricane Humberto battered Texas and dragged on across Louisiana as a
tropical storm Thursday, killing at least one person and leaving a trail
of damage and flood warnings, authorities said.
Downgraded from a hurricane which blocked roads and shut down oil
refineries in Texas, the storm plowed east into Louisiana, where
memories are still fresh of the deadly Hurricane Katrina that devastated
the state in 2005.
There, Humberto stormed past the city of Lake Charles where strong winds
"took the roof off a trailer, knocked down some trees, some power
lines," John Butterick of the local county emergency preparedness
department told AFP.
Similar damage was incurred earlier in southeastern Texas, where
Hurricane Humberto hurled power lines into the roads after hitting land
Thursday morning, a local official said.
"Power lines are down, the roads are closed" near High Island where the
storm blasted ashore, an official in the Galveston County sheriff's
office told AFP.
Texas governor Rick Perry declared disaster areas in three southeastern
counties, his office said in a statement.
CNN quoted authorities as saying that the storm killed an 80-year-old
man in Texas. He was crushed by a metal roof which crashed down as
Humberto blasted by, packing winds up to 135 kilometers (85 miles) per hour.
Television pictures showed roads there flooded with several inches of
rain and mobile homes flipped over on their sides.
The storm dumped rain on parts of Texas already sodden from a stormy
summer and threatened to pour up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) on parts
of Louisiana, with heavy rain also due in Arkansas, Alabama and
Mississippi, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center.
The center in its latest advisory late Thursday afternoon downgraded
Humberto to a tropical depression as it continued northeastward over
Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 55 kilometers (35 miles) per
hour.
"Isolated tornadoes are possible tonight in southeastern Louisiana and
southern Mississippi," it said.
Weather authorities had warned of possible flooding in Louisiana but
none was reported, Butterick said early Thursday afternoon after
Hurricane Humberto was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm.
It had emerged as such over the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday and suddenly
mushroomed into a hurricane just before slamming ashore on the Texas
coast early Thursday.
Three oil refineries in Port Arthur, southeastern Texas, shut down when
it knocked out their electricity supplies -- including the Motiva
refinery, jointly run by Shell and Saudi Refining, which produces
285,000 barrels a day.
"The Port Arthur electric utility has experienced widespread outage in
its service area as a result of Hurricane Humberto," Shell said in a
statement.
Humberto also closed down refineries of the Valero energy company and
the French group Total.
Humberto was the third hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season,
following two maximum category five hurricanes that slammed Mexico and
Central America in August and earlier this month.
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco had already declared a state of
emergency as a precautionary measure on Wednesday.
In Texas, the governor activated search and rescue teams, including six
black hawk helicopters, 50 military vehicles and 200 soldiers.
Central America and Mexico were hit by two massive category five
hurricanes, Dean and Felix, in past weeks, which left more than 130
people dead in the region.
Another storm system, described by the hurricane center as a "poorly
organized depression" was meanwhile gusting northwestward Thursday in
the Caribbean 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of the Lesser Antilles
islands.
It has a chance of becoming a tropical storm within the next 24 hours,
the center said.