Texas Hit By Hurricane

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32367, 5 August 1970, Page 13

Texas Hit By Hurricane

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CORPUS CHRISTI (Texas), August 4. Hurricane Celia intensified with alarming suddenness yesterday, and blasted ashore with 145-mile-an-hour winds to davastate property over a wide area of Texas.

The police reported two oil fires raging out of control in one small fishing community, and said that almost all of two other small towns were destroyed. Corpus Christi, a modem bustling town of more than 200,000 people, faces heavy loss of property. The Mayor (Mr Jack Blackmon) said: “Many buildings have been unroofed, all commercial power is out, and the city’s water system is without pressure.” He ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

Although there have been unconfirmed reports of as

many as 200 people being injured in the small town of Aranasas Pass, where all telephone communication was lost, no deaths were reported during an early check of the storm’s path. Celia, the first hurricane to strike the United States this season, subsided slightly on Monday night, but her rain—up to eight inches—caused flash flooding as she headed inland. The winds were gusting to 115 miles an hour shortly before they smashed inland across the popular resort beaches of Mustang and Padre Islands, but by the time the storm reached the shore, for reasons meterologists have not explained, they increased to 145 miles an hour.

Reports from an amateur radio emergency network say that two huge oil fires are burning at Ingleside, just across Corpus Christi Bay. The network also reported that nearly every building in the towns of Taft and Aransas Pass, just north of Corpus Christi, were destroyed. A hospital collapsed in Aransas Pass, and two huge grain elevators were felled in Taft, spilling their freshly-harvested contents across the remains of the town.

Just west of Corpus Christi the winds caused severe damage to a naval hospital, and 40 patients were removed to a bam.

Four companies of National Guardsmen, comprising about 450 men, have been ordered to Corpus Christi by Governor Preston Smith.

More than 300 telephone linesmen from San Antonio and other parts of Texas have gone to the city to deal with what telephone officials say is a 50 per cent loss of service.

During the peak of the storm, two radio transmitter masts came down. One, 40 storeys tall, fell on the transmitting house, narrowly missing two men inside. The other fell across a main thoroughfare and crushed three empty cars.