Power still out in Corpus Christi after Harvey hit
AUSTIN – With the “vast majority” of the city lacking electricity on Saturday, a Corpus Christi police spokesman said he’d suggest that residents who fled Hurricane Harvey might want to wait to return.
Speaking by phone as he drove through the city, senior officer Travis Pace, a police department spokesman, said that while “we understand” that residents want to return home, “if they’ve got a place to stay and it’s comfortable” elsewhere, delaying a return might be a good idea since they may not have power.
Corpus Christi, a Gulf Coast city of about 325,000, did not make evacuation mandatory but “a large number of people” left Thursday night, Pace said.
“Not a lot” of street lights were working, Pace said, and traffic looked more like something you’d see on Sunday morning than Saturday afternoon.
But while power crews were not yet able to begin repairing downed lines that fell in Harvey’s 75 miles per hour winds Friday, Pace said the city got lucky.
“There is some structural damage but for the most part we’re doing all right,” he said.
One man, however, was shot by a homeowner on Saturday morning.
Pace said the man knocked on the door of the homeowner, who gave him a blanket.
“He attempted to break in,” Pace said. “That was when the homeowner attempted to defend himself.”
Pace could not confirm the shooting victim’s condition, but said that if the man doesn’t make it, it’s not attributable to the storm.
“We’ve had no deaths or serious injuries related to the storm,” Pace said.
John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.