Robert Sagers said it’s astounding the amount of devastation that can take place on one Friday night.
The former Tooele County resident, who now lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, said he prepared for the worst on Thursday when he heard that Category 4 Hurricane Harvey was about to hit the southeast Texas coast.
“The city has a notification system so everybody was prepared,” he said. “We had our windows boarded and waited it out. Half of our [LDS] ward evacuated up north. We sat on our front porch Friday night and the wind got worse and it rained all night. We were really lucky, but the north part of our stake about 40 miles away was devastated.”
Sagers grew up in Rush Valley and attended both Grantsville and Tooele high schools. He moved to Corpus Christi 22 years ago when he transferred from Tooele Army Depot to Corpus Christi Army Depot.
He and his wife, Leisa, live on the south side of Corpus Christi Bay, an area that did not sustain as much damage as did communities on the north side of the bay.
“Rockport, on the north side of the bay was pretty much wiped out,” Sagers said. “Portland, on the north side, has quite a bit of damage.”
“There are a few other Tooeleans who live down here,” he added. “Frances Rosarius and Carla Withers live out on Mustang Island and the storm brought the water level up by 10 feet out there. People on Mustang Island were evacuated. They don’t have electricity and sewage. Volunteers are trying to find housing for those people.”
He said former Grantsville resident Brenda Bartle, who also lives in the area, evacuated to Waco, Texas. Sagers was unsure about the status of Rosarius and Withers.
Sagers said, “the Houston temple has water up to the doors, but that has happened before. … As for us in our area, we definitely feel we were blessed. We had some property damage, but no injuries.”
Houston is approximately 215 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. Evacuation efforts to rescue flooding victims were in full force in the city on Monday and Tuesday, according to national media reports.
Hurricane Harvey came ashore shortly after 11 p.m. on Friday, just north of Port Aranas, which is about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi.
Richard Briggs, a former community news editor and sports writer for the Tooele Transcript Bulletin, recently moved from St. George to Houston to attend law school at Texas Southern University.
“I have seen more rain here in three months than I saw in a decade living in Utah,” Briggs said.
“Right now, none of us can go anywhere. You might be able to drive a couple blocks down the street, but then you run into flooding,” he said.
When Houston residents heard about the storm, things became a bit crazy, Briggs said.
“On Thursday night, it was packed at Walmart with people getting supplies. All the gas stations were full,” he said.
“My law school classes were canceled on Friday afternoon, and school will be canceled until next Thursday,” Briggs said. “… My dad and I had tickets to go to the BYU game on Saturday here, but that’s not going to happen.”
It was announced on BYU’s athletic website Monday afternoon that the Cougars’ game against Louisiana State University had been moved from NRG Stadium in Houston to Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
National media outlets reported Tuesday morning that the Coast Guard had rescued around 3,000 stranded Texans on Monday.
Also, Houston police had rescued about 1,000 people since Monday morning, and about 8,000 people were estimated to be in Houston shelters Monday night. About 5,000 were expected to be in the Houston Convention Center, according to reports.
Several locales had received 2 feet or more of rain, and forecasters said a reprieve won’t arrive until week’s end at the earliest. Rain totals could reach 40 to 50 more inches along the upper Texas coast, according to the National Weather Service
The NWS reported precipitation totals as high as 39.72 inches in 72 hours in parts of southeast Texas.
Hurricane Harvey is being reported as the second strongest storm to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Charley in 2004.
For comparison, the average annual precipitation total for Tooele City is 18.49 inches, according to local NWS observer Ned Bevan.