Hurricane Claudette hits Texas coast; two deaths reported
At least two deaths were reported, a 33-year-old woman in Victoria, 40 miles inland from Port O'Connor, and a 13-year-old boy in Jourdanton, near San Antonio, who were hit by falling trees or limbs, authorities said. The Coast Guard had to rescue two men whose 92-foot shrimp boat sank.
Claudette became a hurricane, the first of the Atlantic storm season, early yesterday when sustained winds around its eye reached 74 mph. By the time it hit land at midday, its sustained winds topped 80 mph and gusts of 88 mph were recorded at Wadsworth, site of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant.
"The windows are flexing, it's howling and I'm wondering what ... I'm doing here," Ed Conaway said at the power plant, just north of where Claudette's eye made landfall.
Claudette began losing its punch after reaching Texas and was downgraded late yesterday afternoon to a tropical storm, with sustained winds down to 70 mph.
At 10 p.m. EDT, the storm's center was about 70 miles south-southwest of San Antonio. All weather warnings for the Texas coast were discontinued.
Gov. Rick Perry signed a disaster-relief proclamation to help speed state and federal response and authorized the National Guard to help with rescue and recovery.
During the storm, Gary Lawrence watched as the wind toppled the roof over gasoline pumps at the Shell Food Mart where he works just east of Carancahua Bay, between Palacios and Port Lavaca.
"It was real gradual, then it went down," he said, speaking through the store's broken front window. "Then a little while later something else flew in and broke the window."
Claudette developed a week ago in the Caribbean, brushing Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula before entering the Gulf of Mexico.
It was the first hurricane to strike Texas since 1999, when Bret slammed into a largely unpopulated stretch between Corpus Christi and Brownsville.