The wind was so intense here 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 neighbor’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 Saturday, just after Hurricane Harvey made landfall over this spit of land 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, Texas.
As residents emerged throughout the morning, local officials and emergency responders across the region scrambled to assess the damage.
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 vacation retreats. The Category 4 hurricane tossed the mobile homes across streets and into neighboring structures, chewed through brick buildings, peeled off roofs and aluminum siding.
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, including several iconic structures in the beachy commercial district. The wind shredded restaurants and stores. Strip malls and hotels also suffered major damage.