Damage toll from Harvey mounts as rescuers strive to reach stranded communities
VICTORIA, Texas _ Search and rescue teams sifted through wreckage across Texas on Saturday after Hurricane Harvey slammed onto the Gulf Coast as a powerful Category 4 storm, flattening mobile homes, tearing roofs off buildings and leaving more than 300,000 homes and businesses without power.
Across southern Texas, officials had yet to uncover the full extent of the damage. Heavy rain and lashing winds had covered roads in debris, blocking access to many small towns and rural areas.
Roy Laird, assistant fire chief with the Rockport Volunteer Fire Department, said three people were dead in Aransas County. Throughout the day, emergency responders combed through the debris of collapsed buildings, broken power poles and uprooted palm trees.
With winds topping 130 mph, Harvey is the first Category 4 storm to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Charley struck Florida in 2004 and the first to hit Texas since Hurricane Carla in 1961.
Even as Harvey weakened Saturday to a tropical storm with 65 mph winds, weather officials warned residents to expect "extremely serious" flooding, life-threatening storm surges and tornadoes.
"Tropical storm barely moving," the National Hurricane Center in
