Alice Flynn | World News Editor
Texas is America’s second largest state and home to a staggering 28 million citizens. However, the state is about to face major turmoil when a hurricane, suspected to be the most powerful storm to hit the US in twelve years, is set to devastate Texas’ coastline throughout today.
With a forecasted 102cm of rain and wind speeds of up to 130mph, government officials had unsurprisingly grown increasingly worried and raised the storm’s ferocity from a Category 3 to a Category 4 level, making it the strongest hurricane to make landfall in Texas for more than half a century. It is currently a Category 1 storm, but has stalled over the state, dumping feet of rainwater on already saturated ground.
Named Hurricane Harvey, chaos has already ensued as it has made its way up the Gulf of Mexico. Experts have estimated that it will likely decimate the heart of where the state’s invaluable oil industry lies – undoubtedly instilling further economic pressure upon the state.
Governor Gregg Abbott has requested for urgent federal aid in a letter to President Trump, since Houston’s National Weather Service have stated that storm Harvey’s abundant rain may make Texas’ central coast “uninhabitable for weeks or months”. Already, bigger towns and cities in the state are reporting flooding and unusually high levels on rivers.
While evacuations have not been made mandatory as of yet, tens of thousands of citizens have been urged to leave their homes and flock for safety. In the coastal town of Rockport local authorities asked residents who had not heeded warnings to evacuate inland to write their social security numbers and names on their forearms to aid recovery of their bodies.
Thankfully, this advice seems to have been taken on board by many, as evident from reports of large traffic jams on the highways heading out from the coast and toward safer ground.
Alice Flynn
