Hurricane Humberto Dumps Rain In Texas, Louisiana

BEAUMONT, TX. (AP) – Hurricane Humberto, the first hurricane to hit the U.S. in two years, sneaked up on southeast Texas overnight and crashed ashore Thursday with heavy rains and 80-mph winds, killing at least one person.

The system rapidly became a Category 1 hurricane, then weakened to a tropical storm by midmorning and bore into central Louisiana. Roads were flooded and power was knocked out, but the greatest concern was heavy rain falling in areas already inundated by a wet summer. Humberto didn’t exist until late Wednesday afternoon, and wasn’t even a tropical storm until almost midday, strengthening from a tropical depression with 35-mph winds to a hurricane with 85-mph winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

“To put this development in perspective – no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, someday, why this happened,” Franklin said. Edward Petty, 50, was clearing debris in front of his Beaumont home and said he was surprised by the quick turn. “It was amazing to go to sleep to a tropical storm and wake up to a hurricane,” he said. “What are you going to do? You couldn’t get up and drive away. You couldn’t run for it. You just have to hunker down.”

Humberto made landfall near the same spot Hurricane Rita did in 2005, and areas of southwest Louisiana not fully recovered from Rita were bracing for more misery. “I’m in a FEMA trailer (because of Rita) and I’m on oxygen,” said Albertha Garrett, 70, who spent the night at a shelter in the Lake Charles Civic Center. “I had to come to the civic center just in case the lights would go out, because I’m alone and I’m handicapped.” The storm struck about 5 miles east of High Island, near the eastern tip of the Texas coast, then weakened and bore into central Louisiana, forecasters said.

“It’s a very compact storm,” meteorologist Jim Sweeney said. “The strongest winds are very close to the center of circulation. The hurricane force winds only go about 15 miles.” Power was knocked out for most of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Entergy Texas spokeswoman Debi Derrick said. She estimated about 100,000 customers were without power in the immediate wake of the storm. In Louisiana, the storm flooded highways and knocked out power to about 13,000 homes and businesses.

One location blacked out was Jefferson County’s Emergency Operations Center in Beaumont, where wind speeds of 75 to 80 mph were noted, said Michael White, the county’s assistant emergency management coordinator. Officials were forced to track the storm with laptops, he said. Along Port Arthur’s refinery row, plants run by Valero Energy Corp. and Total SA – with a combined capacity of 565,000 barrels of crude oil and liquid hydrocarbons a day – and a Motiva refinery were idled until power was restored, spokesmen for the companies said.

One man died in east Texas when the carport at his home collapsed on him, Bridge City Police Chief Steve Faircloth said. The town is between Port Arthur and Orange. The Beaumont Enterprise reported on its web site that the roof of a High Island grocery store had been ripped away. At the High Island football stadium, the scoreboard had toppled into the street, sending bees swarming about. Clusters of lights for the football field fell to the ground, their supporting poles apparently snapped. Texas 87 was closed between High Island and Rollover Pass due to downed power lines and debris. Along Texas 124 between High Island and Winnie, power lines and power poles were down.

Water covered Texas 87 just north of the Intercoastal Waterway, blocking access to Sabine Pass, according to the Enterprise. At 10 a.m. CDT, Humberto’s center was about 75 miles west-northwest of Lafayette, La., moving northeast at nearly 12 mph. Maximum sustained winds are near 65 mph, but it was expected to weaken into a tropical depression by early Friday. The highest rainfall in Texas was on the Bolivar Peninsula of Galveston Island, which got 6 1/2 inches of rain, the National Weather Service said. The storm had been expected to dump up to 10 inches of rain on already saturated Texas.

Gov. Rick Perry declared Jefferson, Orange and Galveston counties disaster areas. Texas has had one of the wettest summers on record, and residents feared flooding. With Humberto missing major urban areas, street flooding in the Beaumont area was relatively minor. State government officials were sending help to affected areas. “We’re pushing in generators, water and ice to affected areas, particularly those who have lost power,” said Robert Black, Perry’s spokesman. “We’re working with the private sector to get power restored as quickly as possible.” In Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency. Calcasieu and Vermilion parishes had shelters on standby.

Vermilion also was making sandbags and sand available, said Mark Smith, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. The warning area included Louisiana’s Cameron Parish, which was devastated by Hurricane Rita – with winds far stronger than Humberto – in September 2005. More than 500 federally issued travel trailers and mobile homes remain there. Last month, at least six deaths were blamed on Tropical Storm Erin, which dropped nearly a foot of rain in parts of Texas. Another tropical depression formed Wednesday far in the open Atlantic, about 930 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. It had maximum sustained winds near 35 mph and was moving west-northwest at about 16 mph.

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press Writer

— Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in New Orleans, John Pain in Miami, David Koenig in Dallas and April Castro in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)