Hurricane Hits East Texas, Loses Punch After Landfall

Hurricane Chantal roared ashore Tuesday on the upper Texas Gulf Coast with 80 m.p.h. winds and driving rain, killing one person and leaving scattered power outages and flooding but apparently causing little serious damage.

The storm was blamed for the death of a man who fell from an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans. No injuries were reported in Texas.

The hurricane’s sustained wind speed never exceeded 80 m.p.h. and decreased to 75 m.p.h. as it moved inland. About three hours after the storm made landfall Tuesday morning at High Island, it had weakened further and was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Thirteen people had been plucked from capsized fishing vessels in the stormy Gulf of Mexico by Coast Guard helicopter crews. The Coast Guard also sent a patrol boat and a jet into the storm Tuesday to take water pumps to two shrimp boats in trouble.

Up to 15 inches of rain was forecast for parts of eastern Texas, where many areas remained saturated from a tropical storm six weeks ago. Meteorologists said that with rivers and creeks still high from the earlier rain, residents in low flood-prone areas should take precautions.

A Galveston shelter housed some 1,000 people for the night, but it was closed by midday as the worst of the storm passed. Shelters in Port Arthur and Beaumont were vacant by mid-morning after only about an inch of rain fell.

About 30 people spent the night at the high school in High Island, a lightly populated fishing and resort community midway between Port Arthur and Galveston.

“My house started to move and it’s not a mobile home,” said Jim Chaney, of nearby Crystal Beach. “That’s about the time we decided we should be moving along.”

“We were real lucky,” added Donny Jones, who lives near High Island. His home suffered minor damage when a 60-year-old pecan tree blew over.

In Houston, winds up to 40 m.p.h. caused downtown skyscrapers to sway and creak, but no damage was reported.

Roofs were blown off a few houses and some utility poles were blown down along the coast.

At High Island, barrels rolled along roads and the metal roof of a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall was shredded. Residents lost power although the few businesses in town remained open.

“We get worse thunderstorms than this,” said Betty Barrow, a 28-year resident of High Island. “People are always casual about these things here. The old-timers don’t worry about these things; they just stay.”