Hurricane Hits Thinly Populated Texas Coast

A powerful Hurricane Bret blasted across the South Texas coast Sunday with winds of 125 mph, largely sparing vulnerable Corpus Christi for a landfall south of the city in one of the least-populated coastal areas in the U.S.

The eye of the storm roared over deserted Padre Island National Seashore about 6 p.m. CDT and then slammed into Kenedy County, a vast grassland prairie that is home to portions of the famous King Ranch and more cattle than people. Human population of the entire county: about 450.

“If there’s a good place for a dangerous hurricane to go, that’s it,” said Bill Read, a National Weather Service forecaster in Houston.

Ahead of the storm, tens of thousands of residents fled inland, jamming highways even as winds drove rain in horizontal sheets and rattled street signs in Corpus Christi and Kingsville. Police said Interstate 37, the main highway out of Corpus Christi, was virtually bumper-to-bumper for 150 miles, all the way to San Antonio.

By nightfall, more than 3,400 people had checked into emergency shelters in nine coastal counties. In San Antonio, some hotels offered reduced rates for evacuees.

Gov. George W. Bush asked that a major disaster be declared in seven South Texas counties, making them eligible for emergency federal aid, a request that President Clinton granted late Sunday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.

Near the storm’s center, the cows hunkered down on the range, while people who decided against evacuation gathered in shelters, mostly in the Kenedy County seat of Sarita, home to ranch hands and cowboys, about 80 miles south of Corpus Christi. Ranchers said the livestock have a way of finding shelter behind sand dunes and other natural barriers.

“We’re pretty well prepared,” said Kenedy County Sheriff Rafael M. Cuellar Jr. “We have almost the whole town in shelters--a school, a church and, if we need it, the courthouse. We have two or three stubborns, so we have to use a lot of tactics.”

As the eye of the storm moved over land, Hurricane Bret’s winds diminished to about 115 mph, but emergency officials warned of the peril of flash floods. As much as 15 to 20 inches of rain was possible overnight and today as Bret headed west, threatening towns in the Rio Grande Valley and across the border in Mexico.

Wind gusts of 50 mph and more were recorded in Corpus Christi, 70 miles to the north of landfall, and in Brownsville, 70 miles to the south.

A tornado watch was in effect over the area until 2 a.m. today.

“We’re very thankful that [Bret] didn’t go northeast and hit the Corpus Christi area,” said FEMA Director James Lee Witt. “But this is still a dangerous storm.”

Witt said an Air National Guard search-and-rescue team had been activated, and supplies of generators, blankets and cots were ready for shipment to the area if needed.

“We will be ready to respond as soon as the storm is through the area,” Witt said at a Washington news conference.

Corpus Christi, the region’s biggest city, declared a state of disaster and called for a voluntary evacuation of its 300,000 residents.

Among those who rode out the storm in Corpus Christi was Jake Henry, a health care executive who spent much of the day nailing sheets of plywood over his windows. “We’re weathering it really well,” said Henry, who recently moved to Texas from Orange County, Calif. “I’ve been in earthquakes, fires and floods, and this has been less taxing than any of that other stuff.”

Jim Snow, general manager of the Omni Hotels in Corpus Christi, presided over a sparsely filled but fortress-like building able to withstand 200-mph winds. While most of the hotel’s guests had fled, Snow said about 100 rooms remained occupied by straggling tourists and another 100 by freshly arrived journalists.

Bret was the first hurricane to make landfall in the Lone Star State since Hurricane Jerry in 1989.

Bret formed late last week from an area of low pressure in the Bay of Campeche off the Mexican coast. As a tropical storm, it moved steadily northward into U.S. waters. There, in the warm gulf, Bret exploded into a storm with winds as powerful as those of Hurricane Andrew, which killed 17 people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and caused $30 billion in damage when it struck south of Miami in 1992.

But Bret appeared to be no Andrew.

“It looks like a regular thunderstorm,” said Robert Beltran, a paramedic on duty in a shelter opened at a Kingsville elementary school. “I’ve seen worse than this.”

Nonetheless, as the hurricane approached the coast Sunday, it packed the potential to wreak widespread havoc, and residents hurriedly took heed. Windows were shuttered and boats were pulled from the water. Bottled water was hard to find. Satellite photos showed Hurricane Bret as a lopsided oval, spinning counter-clockwise, carrying a maelstrom of heavy thunderstorms and punishing winds ahead of its western eyewall.

Waves of 26 feet were recorded Sunday morning at a buoy 45 miles off the coast, according to the National Weather Service, and a storm surge of 15 feet was predicted to roll over the fragile barrier islands. A full assessment of damage caused by Bret would not be known until later today.

All 25,000 residents of the city of Kingsville were ordered to evacuate, causing dislocation and anxiety. Schoolteacher Olinda Salazar, 44, said she, her husband and their three children had planned to ride out the storm at home, but tornado warnings sent them to a shelter as the hurricane drew near.

“We decided we couldn’t hack that,” Salazar said. But the Salazars had to leave behind the family dog. “We fixed his blankets in the middle of the house and gave him some water. But we’re worried.”

Late Sunday, tornadoes were reported in Kingsville and near Alice in Jim Wells County.

After a slow start to the six-month hurricane season, which began June 1, the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico were suddenly boiling with dangerous weather systems. Bret was only the second named storm of a season that many experts predict will be busy.

Forecasters in Miami were also tracking a system north of Puerto Rico and the remnants of Hurricane Cindy, which had weakened to a tropical depression in the far Atlantic Ocean.

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Times researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Hurricane Bret

Position: 26.9 N, 97.6 W

Moving: W at 7 mph

Sustained winds: 116 mph

As of: Sunday, 8 p.m. PDT