One day later roaring ashore like a hurricaneHanna hit the Texas Gulf Coast on Sunday with strong winds and torrential rains that destroyed boats, flooded streets and left without electricity in a region that was already reeling from a sudden surge in coronavirus cases.
Descending into a tropical depression, Hanna crossed the US-Mexico border in winds close to 50 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. It dumped more than 12 inches of rain in parts of southern Texas and northeast Mexico.
Border communities whose health care systems were already strained by the COVID-19 cases, with some patients airlifted to larger cities, found themselves under siege from the country’s first hurricane. Atlantic season 2020. There were no immediate reports of deaths on either side of the border.
Eric Gay / AP
Dr. Ivan Meléndez, the Hidalgo County, Texas health authority, was treating a patient overnight in a hospital when he and a nurse noticed that water was falling down a wall and accumulating on the floor. Water was flowing through a vent in the room, which had been adapted with a fan to create negative pressure and prevent the virus from spreading through the hospital.
After driving home in the middle of the storm in the middle of the night, Meléndez was trapped Sunday morning at his home by fallen trees and had no electricity. He used the phone to discuss whether to put a 58-year-old woman on a respirator, a decision that made her uncomfortable without seeing the patient in person.
“You look into people’s eyes,” he said. “You will know if they are desperate.”
Another doctor decided to put the woman on the ventilator, he said later.
Henry Van De Putte, CEO of the Texas Gulf Coast Red Cross chapter, said the organization would open more shelters with reduced capacity to ensure social distancing. Volunteers and people seeking shelter will undergo temperature checks, and a medical professional will be assigned to each location, he said.
A community building known as the “Dome” in Mercedes, Texas, was reserved for evacuees who tested positive for COVID-19 or were exposed to the virus. Throughout the region, shelters were also opened in hotels, schools and gyms.
Van De Putte emphasized that people should not delay seeking help because of the virus.
“Yes, coronavirus provides risk, but so does floodwater, it has no electricity, it does not need medication,” he said. “We are doing everything we can to make it a safe environment.”
In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, a maternity hospital was damaged by heavy rains and water had to be pumped, authorities said. Some patients had to be moved to the upper floors, and some were evacuated to other hospitals, said Pedro Granados, director of civil protection for the state of Tamaulipas.
Coastal states struggled this spring to adjust hurricane emergency plans to account for the virus, and Hanna was the first major test. Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday that some people in need of shelter will receive hotel rooms to keep them separate from others.
Abbott announced Sunday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved an emergency declaration that will provide federal aid.
Eric Gay / AP
Hanna flew ashore as a Category 1 storm late Saturday afternoon with 90 mph winds not far from Port Mansfield, which is about 130 miles south of Corpus Christi.
Myrle Tucker, 83, attempted to escape the storm in a boat docked at a Corpus Christi marina. But the winds and rain blew through the windows of the ship. Finally, rescuers in a boat were able to catch up with him and carry him to shore. Many other ships were flooded and hit by the storm.
Tucker said he told his rescuers that he wasn’t sure he could get out of his boat.
“They picked me up,” he said. “They took me like a box of napkins.”
More than 150,000 customers lost power Sunday across South Texas, including Corpus Christi, Harlingen and Brownsville, public service officials said.
Eric Gay / AP
Corpus Christi is in Nueces County, where 60 babies tested positive for COVID-19 from July 1-16. Further south in Cameron County, more than 300 new cases have been reported almost daily in the past two weeks. The past week has also been the deadliest pandemic in the county.
Hanna arrived almost three years later. Hurricane harvey flew ashore northeast of Corpus Christi. Hanna was not expected to be as destructive as Harvey, who killed 68 people and caused estimated damage of $ 125 billion in Texas.
In the Mexican city of Matamoros, off Brownsville, rains shook tents in a refugee camp that houses some 1,300 asylum seekers, including newborns and the elderly, who have been waiting for months for court dates under a policy Immigration Law Informally known as “Staying in Mexico”.
In the Pacific Ocean, meanwhile, Hurricane Douglas Closed in Hawaii on the weekend.
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