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tv   ABC7 News 500AM  ABC  August 26, 2017 5:00am-6:00am PDT

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good morning, america. breaking news as we come on the air. hurricane harvey making landfall as a massive category 4 storm steering into the state of texas packing 130-mile-an-hour winds and torrential rain. the monster storm ripping apart buildings. the search is on this morning for anyone who may be trapped. harvey now the most powerful storm to hit the continental u.s. in more than a decade. overnight, the white house issuing a disaster declaration. the national guard deployed. thousands evacuated from harvey's violent path. >> this is going to be a very major disaster. >> the force of the storm lighting up utility lines. hundreds of thousands without power right now. the lone star state now bracing
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for catastrophic flooding. tornadoes and a massive surge from the biggest storm to hit texas in more than 50 years. our team is on the ground in the storm zone with the very latest. good morning, everybody. paula is off. glad to have abc's amy robach alongside me as well as abc's chief meteorologist ginger zee as we're tracking the big breaking news on this saturday morning. the monster storm. hurricane harvey and its tortuously slow march along the gulf coast. >> satellite image of where it is right now. it is a category 1 hurricane about 30 miles southwest of victoria, texas, but it came ashore overnight as a ferocious category 4 storm, winds of 130 miles per hour. it made landfall around rockport where the high school we know was heavily damaged. this is the strongest to hit the united states in 12 years and
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already dealing a devastating blow. >> here's what makes this storm so extraordinarily dangerous. it's not a normal hurricane that come as shore and whips people up and buildings up with high winds and a storm surge. it is also going to stay in place for days and days and days and dump up to 40 inches of rain in some spots. that could mean catastrophic and life imperiling flooding. so far 16 inches of rain have fallen near victoria, texas, with widespread catastrophic flooding expected as i said as we also said places could see 20 to 30 to 40 inches more in the coming days, on top of all that, tornado warnings and watches are up right now. >> we have team coverage from texas including all along the gulf coast but we begin with abc's rob marciano in port lavaca, texas, where he has been battered all night and morning long. rob. >> good morning again, guys. it is relentless, that's for
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sure. we just measured a hurricane strength wind gust and you can see certainly blowing that way. you'll see how ferocious they are. it's southwest of us meaning the center has passed us but we're in the back part right of this system and it's just spilling in to low pressure and accelerating some of these winds and the storm surge is still high and that has not gone down at all. this thing escalating, the last few days, ramping up to a category 4 storm coming ashore last night. at least for now the state of texas bearing the brunt. overnight harvey taking aim at texas. a monster making landfall with category 4 winds extreme storm surge and torrential rains. in rockport, catastrophic damage across the city. the goliath storm destroying this hotel tearing off the roof. the walls collapsing with the force of the wind.
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debris flying everywhere. >> harvey is no joke. >> reporter: at this local high school a building completely wiped out. >> we are hearing that there are buildings down. we've got reports that we can't exactly confirm because we're unable to get people out on the street. it's a little too dangerous. >> reporter: extreme winds leveling this gas station. signs along the interstate ripped off and tossed to the ground. hurricane harvey came barreling in packing winds of 130 miles per hour. tearing apart these power lines. watch as they ignite lighting up the neighborhood. >> oh! >> reporter: in our hotel the staircases flooded. the water still rising making it impossible to walk around. the water is surrounding us, the storm surge now has made us an island and you can hear the wind cranking up even more. and in galveston county, this blazing house fire causing three homes to go up in flames. in fulton ripping winds blasting
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through town tearing off rooftops leaving dozens of homes uninhabitable. texas officials with a dire warning telling people who decided to ride out the storm, to write their names and social security numbers on their arms should they need to be identified. that is a sobering message as are these sobering conditions. actually this is the worst it has been all morning and now that the sun is come up and skies brightening i'm not seeing the debris that surrounds our hotel but the vegetation, the palm trees and the bushes and the trees that are being tossed around like toys in the wind is unbelievable how powerful this storm still is now that it's been on land for several, several hours, it is lengthening at this point and sobering sight as the sun is starting to brighten things up and get a
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look around obviously as the day progresses and these winds start to die down but they have not done that yet, dan and amy. this wind has been relentless to use that word yet again. >> sobering, indeed. rob marciano, thank you. >> for those of you who watched this show regularly and know and love rob, i just want to assure you he has covered many of these before and they're taking every precaution. we want to move to brock long, the fema administrator, in charge of making sure that the emergency response in this country is robust. mr. long, thank you very much for joining us on this saturday morning. >> good morning. glad to be with you. >> as we all know and you certainly know, after hurricane katrina which was 12 years ago this tuesday, your -- fema, your agency took a beating politically and in the public eye for many viewed was an inadequate response. as we head into this, the
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biggest and strongest storm to hit in 12 years are you prepared? >> yeah, absolutely. fema is vastly different from the days of katrina and we learned a lot from that event. you know, congress passed meaningful legislation through it to allow us the ability to move forward. last night the president expedited the governor's major disaster declaration request and approve tla approve that. what that does is we can move forward and bring the entire firepower of the federal government down to help the state and local governments to meet their response goals. >> you and i spoke yesterday when harvey was a category 2 storm. it made landfall as a category 4 storm. it is certainly catastrophic. it is not going anywhere any time soon. talk a little about what you're anticipating and what the actuality is and how you're going to go about getting help to those who need it. >> unfortunately, the citizens of texas are about to endure a
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very long and deadly inland event. you know, this system is -- this is just the beginning so we're going to see over the next 48 to 72 hours devastating rainfall, we realize that. i think the primary migs will be focused around search and rescue, swift water rescue right off the bat. we'll be worried about mass care, long-term mass care. a sizable individual assistance in housing effort as well as being able to mobilize life-saving and sustaining commodities so we're already pre-positioning teams in an effort to support our state. the way emergency management works is, you know, all disas r disasters begin and end at the local level and decide mission priorities and work them up through the state and our support is designed to help the states achieve those goal. >> you're heading into a key few days and i just got to ask you, do you feel you have the resources you need? there's been some reporting about the fact that some top positions in your agency are not filled. do you feel like you have what you need? >> i got what i need.
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despite the positions, the appointments, we're moving forward. i got great staff. as you can see behind me i have a dedicated staff. we're working around the clock and i've got knowledgeable people with a lot of experience despite having those positions in place. we're moving forward. >> brock, what's your biggest challenge? >> well, the biggest challenge or concern i have is the isolation that many texas citizens are going to face. we have not built a true culture of preparedness in this country and we got a lot of work to better prepare our citizens and, unfortunately, what scares me or what keeps me up at night right now is many of the citizens in texas are going to be isolated in their houses or their dwellings for multiple days. it's going to be a very sizable mission to support citizens and with the weather event, we can't just fly helicopters in. we can't get to people right now until the weather subsides because we can't put our own resources in danger. >> you talk about that culture of preparedness. we've been talking a lot this
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morning about the fact that there is what some people call hurricane amnesia after these 12 long years of not having a storm of this size so let's just hope that everybody is able to make it through this safely. brock long, thank you and we send you the best wishes and best luck as we head into this tumultuous time. >> thank you. >> let's get it down to abc's matt gutman who is in corpus christi, texas, which is another of the areas that's been extremely hard hit by harvey. matt, what are you seeing? >> reporter: more wind, more rain, you know, it was very interesting what we heard fema administrator brock long talk about just now, that was the isolation of some of these communities and we drove up to rockport. that is that community that rob talked about earlier, hammered overnight. now, we knew that this would be the case. it is a low-lying place and when you talk about a 6 to 12-foot storm surge we knew it would be inundated and driving through we saw lots of boarded up houses. we saw empty streets but when we
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stopped to talk to some officer there is, they told us that only 60% of the population had left. that means there are a lot of people still there. and one of the things we're also talking about and that the fema administrator mentioned they can't get to them so first responders can't get there. i want to give you an example why. this limb snapped off a tree 30 yards in that direction. now all morning this wind that we've been buffeted by and my cameraman is being slammed by right now has shifted this giant limb from this side of the street now to this side of the street and everywhere you look there's debris on the ground and this is what first responders, rescuers are so concerned about is driving through this stuff, getting their own personnel hurt. they've got to bide their time. now, one of the things that the mayor of rockport told citizens is you got to get out. if you don't get out you might be signing your own death
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warrant saying literally write your name and social security number on your arm so we might be able to identify you so still very dangerous situation and you mention here in corpus christi what's the situation, well, most of the city in the surround areas are not only isolated but without power. 200,000 without power. there's also a human toll, dan and amy and we got to meet a pregnant woman due to give birth tuesday. her name is danielle weeks and she has a very harrowing and sad story to tell. let's take a listen. >> nervous seeing what's going on outside your window? >> yes, very nervous. >> what about your home? >> we actually live in an rv. so we had to leave it on the island so we're pretty worried that we won't have a home to go back to.
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>> i'm so sorry. and perhaps the most heartbreaking part of all of this is the weeks family just moved back here to texas from colorado a month ago. amy, dan. >> the personal toll there is just unspeakable in some ways. matt gutman, thanks so much. unfortunately, there are going to be more stories like theirs to come. >> absolutely. let's bring in michael brennan from the national hurricane center. michael, give us a sense of how things are going from your standpoint with this storm. what are you watching right now, what are you most concerned about? >> we're starting to see harvey continue to move inland across texas very slowly now. we're seeing the forward motion beginning to decrease and as the winds lowers the storm begins to weaken from a wind perspective the flooding threat will only increase, feeder bands are coming in off the gulf of mexico bringing heavy rain out hundreds of miles away from the center of the storm into the houston/galveston area southwest
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louisiana and very heavy rain near the core as it moves inland. we've seen widespread rainfall totals of 10 to 15 inches in the corpus christi, victoria area. 5 inches already in houston, so we're really looking at a mul multiday disaster as administrator long mentioned. several days of rain because harvey will meander around the middle and upper texas coast all the way into the middle portions of next week and that's going to lead to very, very high rainfall totals, 25 to 35 inches in areas like houston with isolated totals in some places as high as 40 inches and that's going to really lead it a catastrophic life-threatening flooding situation. >> in these types of situations it is the water that kills and that is your biggest concern for that reason because these totals we saw in houston go up to possibly 40 inches of rain? >> right. and water is what kills most of the people in tropical storms and hurricanes. everybody focuses on the wind but storm surge and inland flooding account for about 70%
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of the fatalities in the united states from tropical storms and hurricanes so that's shifting into our main focus now is going to be shifting from the wind and storm surge into the rainfall hazards. it's going to extend for several days. >> we appreciate it. michael brennan, thanks for joining us. we want to turn to san antonio mayor and mr. mayor, thank you for joining us. we know thousands have evacuated to your city to get to higher ground and to she's shelters but you are getting some of that weather from harvey and are expected to get more. what are you focused on right now. >> well, good morning, thanks for having me. yeah, we have two events happening. and we're a coordinated regional emergency operations center so we've been staging equipment and resources for the state to help people out of their emergency situations with receiving evacuees and have over a thousand now in sheltered
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locates in the city but we're also getting the rainfall and here in san antonio we're in flash floodally ey so even a sml amount can cause problems and it's significant so while we're statementing areas and actually have urban search and rescue teams ready to deploy to the coast we're also working to keep our residents off the road and on high ground is there how do you manage -- i was going to say a dual mission, but that underplays it but there are two big missions at the very least that you're dealing with right now. one taking in all these people who have left their homes to get away from the eye of the storm as it made landfall and, two, keeping everybody safe given the fact that you too will be affected by this storm. >> well, it comes down to neighbors helping neighbors, you know, san antonio is a compassionate city. our first response is just to find out where we can help so those people who, you know, are seeking refuge will have
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friendly neighbors and have teams prepared to receive them and places they can go. but we're always prepared here. we are a regional staging ground for any state emergencies like this and we stay prepared 365 days a year. it just so happens we haven't seen a hurricane of this magnitude in, you know, 1 years in the united states, but we stay prepared all the time and we're ready to respond today. >> mayor, you've had practice, unfortunately, we know back in hurricane katrina days back in 2005, in fact, coming up on that anniversary, 12-year anniversary just next tuesday. your city was the evacuation point for 25,000 people. so you know what you're doing. >> we do. our question we ask when people need help is how can we help? when there's a need we will fill it. that's what our city is built on and we'll continue to be that way so no one will be turned away in san antonio. we're here to help. >> those are comforting words i
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know to so many thousands. san antonio mayor ron nirenberg, thanks for being with us. ginger zee, what a busy day for so many people, but especially for meteorologists and thank goodness we have the technology we have to be able to get people the warnings they immediate. >> yes, those warnings are popping up on the map right now, amy. i want to get you straight to this radar because you saw that spin as the hurricane center was telling us and, yes, that eye is important. we still have 80-mile-per-hour max sustained wins. some of the higher reflectist is where we're seeing higher wind gusts and where ron was feeling it. the outer bands taking that moisture from the gulf is where we're seeing the refiest rain. katy, texas, six-inch rain result and all flash flood warnings in red, houston for the next couple of hours has 2 to 4-inch rainfall rates with that band. this is also all embedded with the tornado watch and have seen a warning east of austin earlier
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and saw one near bow month. when the circulation comes onshore get little spinups and brief tornadoes but those could easily rip a roof off and another reason -- >> with very little warning. >> yes so we'll have much more on the path but for now a check closer to home. there it is that eye just west of victoria now should weaken to a tropical storm. make a loop, come back toward the ocean and then become a tropical depression by wednesday, just west of houston. >> not going away soon.
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>> no. >> it certainly hasn't been going away in intensity at all for our rob marciano who is in port lavaca, texas, want to check back in with him. rob, good morning. >> hey, ginger, good morning. you know how bad it is but i got to tell you it's starting to get old. it's starting to get old. we have winds at hurricane strength plus now even after this thing has been passing. because these cars are apart, just how crazy the trees are being blown around and the street lights and even blowing harder last night. the infrastructure and our hotel. there's debris and roof tile and gutters and downspouts, all littering what is the bay now surrounding our hotel.
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winds haven't stopped and the storm surge has not stopped either. we are continuing to be in this as it weakens and the the sun comes up, still getting hit hard in port lavaca. >> every time we check back in with rob we keep thinking it might look less severe. he is just continuing to get hammered throughout the morning. >> we've been talking to him for hours and hours from port lavaca and as you said, just keeps getting worse. harrowing to watch but we really do appreciate rob giving us a sense of what it is like there near the eye of this thing. we're going to be covering this story all morning long and be right back with our extending breaking news coverage of hurricane harvey. "good morning america" is brought to you by lowe's. hurry in today for huge savings on all things fall.
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the organizer of today's patriot prayer rally at san francisco's crissy field has canceled it citing safety concerns. the group will hold a news conference this afternoon in
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alamo square. sunday's anti-marxist rally in berkeley has been canceled. the organizer is asking the public not to attend, but adds she will still been there. meteorologist lisa argen has our bay area forecast. >> we have dense fog around the bay area. here is live cop letter 7. quarter mine visibility from half-moon bay and petaluma. current temperatures are chilly, upper 40s in the north bay but the heat is on today. we are looking at not only a spare the air alert but temperatures near 100 degrees inland today. >> we are back in about 3
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welcome back to our coverage of hurricane harvey. state of emergency. the storm battering the gulf coast and in no nurry, unfortunately to move on. >> already we have seen extensive damage with roofs of buildings blown off, roads flooded. >> and this is just the start. there will be days of rain to come. more than three feet expected in some places. so let us get it back to abc's rob marciano who has been weathering the storm in port lavaca for us all morning. rob. >> i tell you what, dan, you know, you get lulled a little and get caught off balance and one almost knocked me over and it's blowing rain sideways. winds gusting clearly and we have them measured so 77.9 miles an hour so gusts at hurricane
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strength still. took a peek around the back side and the storm surge is still relentless. it looks the thing hasn't even made landfall yet. yet it has and it's well past ourselves in the west and continues to hammer us. this hotel that we've stayed in -- substantial damage -- to o the roof -- our news vehicles that are on ground because this entire which is on a bit of a hill is now on an island because we are surrounded by water. so the velocity and longevity of this storm continues to impress even as it weakens, dan, amy. >> all right, our rob marciano there truly weathering the worst of the elements on the northeast side of that storm as it washed ashore and it is still battering the area. you can see can barely keep his balance. >> he's been doing valiant work
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all morning. joined by mark henry, the galveston county emergency management director. mark, can you hear us? >> i can hear you fine, yes. >> thanks for joining us. give us a sense of what's going on where you are right now. >> we're at the emergency management facility in league city which is about 25 miles north of galveston. we are experiencing heavy rains and some pretty significant winds. the good news is it's exactly what they predicted we would have. we've had about 5 inches of rain and winded sustained around 35 to 40 and have a gust of 71 miles an hour. >> mark, the city's mayor has said he was concerned about this morning's high tide. we know how low of an area galveston is. what's happening on that front? >> yes, exactly. we are concerned about storm surge. we were more concerned before landfall. we're a little more relieved now. the biggest concern for the county is bolivar peninsula geographically disconnected from the county. it's connected by a ferry service which was shut down last night about 6:00 due to high winds and high tides, however
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it's remained passable to the east at highway 87 and highway 124. >> you have told people in many of the areas near you to evacuate. did people heed those warnings? >> at least some did. certainly for bolivar peninsula we wanted them to voluntary evacuate. it wasn't a life safety issue or i would have made a mandatory evacuation. it was an inconvenience. if you can live without power for a few days, okay, we don't care if you stay. we don't see a threat to life but being cut off with the ferry service disrupted is what i was concerned about. that's what happened. >> mark, do you have any concerns for the residents in your area with the rain still coming down. >> absolutely, 5 inch something not a big deal for us. the problem is we're expecting four more days of this so we are concerned about low-lying areas and areas typically prone to flooding. make sure you pay attention, stay tuned to the reliable news sources. we may have to upgrade evacuation services and hope it
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doesn't happen but it could. >> the threat is till there. it is real and it will continue for many, many days. mark henry, thanks for joining us. we wish you the best of luck. >> thank you. >> mark, thank you. back to ginger for an update. category 1 storm packing a strong pump. >> saw the images of rob still with those strong winds. i have an image you need to seen 0 the southwest side of houston. america's fourth largest city already seeing keegan's bayou rising an inch almost out of its banks. apparently this is close to what happened in ike. we are seeing this water rise obviously over a road. i've been watching the shot in our large monitor. you can see the water falling down in buckets at times and so this is just a huge, you know, visual of what i've been showing you. they've been under a flash flood warning for an hour and will for the next couple of hours. the bayous and rivers have had five plus inches and looking for even more. i want to quickly take you to the map so you can see why. so we've got that track of the
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storm. as it become a tropical storm it makes a loop around and blocked. we've got two high pressure systems. yet way above us to the north not going to move and put on the rpm and you saw the rounds of rain over houston. that is where we get the up to 35 inches. we stop it even monday, 1:00 a.m. look at houston, the southwest side where they're warning of now up to 40 inches. some of the national weather service wording getting stronger as we go into the event. flash flood warning and large box stretches back to austin, the four to five or five to seven-inch even into southwest louisiana but it is the heart of where that storm is going to meander and stay for the next 48 to 72 hours that we are most concerned about. i was saying earlier it's a saturday into sunday. people are still in houston obviously. they're thinking it's the weekend. i'm going to go out and drive. please don't. that did the way people die i have updates coming but a check a little closer to home.
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>> this weather report brought to you by beneful. grain free and as i promised more updates and more totals of 9 and 10 inches. >> the images of the bayou is what's happening now. we have days and days left. >> right. >> i hope people heed your warnings. thank you very much. we'll have much more of our breaking news coverage of hurricane harvey coming up. president trump facing his first major natural disaster. we'll talk about how he's handling it just ahead. (dog) mmm. this new beneful grain free is so healthy... oh! farm-raised chicken! mmm...that's some really good chicken. i don't think i've ever tasted chicken like this. what!? here come the accents. blueberries and pumpkin. wow. that was my favorite bite so far. not even kidding. i mean that was... ...oh! spinach! mmm.
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back with our breaking news coverage, hurricane harvey state of emergency. harvey is the first natural disaster on donald trump's watch as we mentioned. he was briefed on the storm yesterday. he also assigned a disaster declaration for texas. not only is this a big test for the president but potentially a big blow for the economy. >> many of our u.s. oil refineries are in the gulf and
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also taking a beating so we have abc's rebecca jarvis here to talk about the massive economic impact this is having on the region and across the country. >> that's right, amy and dan and one of the things that you will see from all of this is while there's a huge human toll and emotional toll on misdemeanor, there is an economic toll on everyone in the country and that's because of the location that it's happening here. this is the heart of our energy patch. 45% of our country's refining capacity exists there in the gulf of mexico, a third of that capacity is right in the range of where this storm is hitting and gasoline prices are projected to climb anywhere from 5 cents to 25 crepes a gallon throughout the country and 25 cents would be on the end where if a refinery actually gets hit many of them are shuttered for the moment, if someone gets hit, destroyed that's where you would see the bigger spike in prices. also on that human toll side of things, housing, so many of these highly populated areas are going to face housing challenges, 200,000 homes at
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least in the path of this storm and the estimates right now are that anywhere from one to $2 billion in damage could be done purely from the win and storm. that doesn't even include the flooding damage. >> we're 12 years out from katrina. we're several years out from sandy and this area and people are still recovering from both of those storms right now in this is what homeowners see every time there is a terrible storm, the time that it it takes to recover is much longer than the storm itself. >> well, rebecca, we certainly appreciate it and know that the flood damage wasn't included in that and we know that is the biggest concern for so many people who are now taking care of people who are in the storm zone, it's the flooding we're worried about. >> it's the water that kills, as well. much more to cover as we continue with our breaking news coverage this morning. we're back with much more "gma," hurricane harvey state of emergency. keep it here. at petsmart, we love all pets like this little guy, sam.
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back with our breaking news coverage, hurricane harvey, state of emergency. you're looking at the damage in rockport, texas, overnight that town was hit hard by harvey's landfall and earlier we spoke to rockport fire chief steve sims who updated us on the condition of his heavily hit city and the reports of damaged buildings there. >> we can't really confirm anything right because we're unable to get people out on the street. one of our fire stations was unmanned.
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so we're waiting on daybreak. >> the sun should rise in about an hour and i'm sure your teams will be out in full force. have you been receiving phone calls? tell us what your plan is when the sun does rise. >> as soon as the weather permits us, the winds get anywhere reasonable, we have been working on lists trying to prioritize the calls that we have waiting. what we feel like is, you know, first priority and we just -- we got 22 firefighters here on standby so we'll be out on the ground. >> it is amazing that we can even communicate with you. i just want to emphasize this point. we're talking to you from a town that took a direct hit from a category 4 hurricane. the strongest storm to hit this country in 12 years. i understand that we're speaking to you on the only working phone line in rockport. every other phone line is down. which raises a lot of questions
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about the safety of those who remain behind. i know you told people they should leave. did that warning get heeded? >> not as much as we would have liked. we would have liked to have seen everybody leave but we know there didn't, you know. yeah, we are totally down on all communications. how this one telephone is still working, maybe the lord is with us. >> and, chief sims, i know that you haven't been able to get out and survey the damage yet. but tell us what you heard, what you felt, what you experienced throughout the night and what your fears are as you do head out later today. >> well, the eye of the hurricane when it made landfall and got right here on us in rockport, we were hoping the building stayed together. it rattled.
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it shook, but made it through it so as soon as daylight gets here we're going to start surveying, you know, in close and then as the wind dies down we'll start expanding out. >> chief steve sims there with a very busy day and several day as head of him as he assesses all the damage and makes sure his residents are okay. as harvey slowly moves out of rockport, houston is in its direct path and now dealing with what is just the start of harvey's extended deluge. abc's victor oquendo joins us there this morning with how this monster storm is affecting that city and we've seen the rainfall dramatically increase there. >> reporter: it has been coming down nonstop, amy, and right now houston is under a flash flood warning and a tornado watch. the rain right now getting a small break from it as it starts to pick up again as we come to you live. we're right next to 59 south, one of the busiest roadways in all of houston. very empty this morning as
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houston's mayor has told people not to get on the roadways and stay safe in place. try to avoid what happened in 2005 before rita hit a mass exodus, deadly gridlock more than 100 people died while trying to flee the city ahead of that storm. trying to avoid that this time around. in 2001, long before that tropical sto tropical storm allison just devastated and rocked the city, 23 people died. tens of thousands of hopes just destroyed. the bayous overflowed and some have spent nearly a billion dollars to strengthen them, trying to avoid theover flowing and reports the rivers, the water levels are starting to rise up, something we'll watch as harvey's outer bands start to really impact the houston area. amy, dan. >> all right, victor oquendo in houston. we will definitely be checking back in with victor throughout the day today. >> absolutely. the key message, don't get complacent. this can be very dangerous with that flash flooding.
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"good morning america" is brought to you by prudential. welcome back to our coverage of hurricane harvey. state of emergency. there you see our rob marciano. he is in port lavaca, texas. he has been there all opening and all morning long and he's got a lot to show us with the very latest as it continues to whip around that town, rob. >> hiing amy we switched up our shot and came on the other side of the building. a little more wind protected but you can see behind me this is the surge, lavaca and matagorda bay and surrounding our hotel and wind taking all that spray. it's like a giant washer machine here on heavy duty cycle. there's a hotel pool right down these steps.
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well, that's now a saltwater pool filled with all sorts of debris from this hotel and from all the other structures around this bay that have been torn apart in the last -- since last night when this thing came ashore as a category 4 storm. we were well away from the eye of this thing but the interwiths continue up here as does the rest. >> all news. >> all morning. >> good morning, everyone. i'm chris nguyen. firefighters are mopping up a small grass fire in the oakland hills, flames broke out just before 11:00 last night at grizzly peek and marlboro terrace. officials say the fire actually began 200 feet down a hillside, but thanks to sparse vegetation crews had little trouble holding it to just one acre. an arson investigation is now
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under way. happening today, it's dennis eckersley's day at the coliseum and bobble heads are involved. before last night's game against texas the oakland a's dedicated gate d to the hall of fame reliever. his family and some of his former teammates took part in the ceremony. today's first 15,000 fans will get an he goersly bobble head and he will throw out the ceremonial first pitch himself. also today a county fair in an unlikely place, facebook. the headquarters in menlo park has been transformed into a family friendly space, fair goers can attend from noon until 7:00 p.m. today, there will be live music, carnival rides and games, even a petting zoo. admission and parking are free, all proceeds from the rides will go to a local non-profit. getting a check of the weather now with our meteorologist lisa argen. hi, lisa. >> hey, chris. good morning. we're turning a corner with the weather today, it's going to heat up quickly. here is live doppler 7 where there is fog along the shoreline and with that reduced visibility from the north bay to the coast
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with less than a quarter of a mile in petaluma, three-quarters of a mile in napa, only in the 40s in santa rosa, 57 in hayward and the temperatures climb quickly with a spare the air alert today, poor air quality in our inland valleys where temperatures will climb to over 100 degrees with 70s at the coast. chris. >> lisa, thank you. up next, breaking news, hundred of thousands of people in texas are without power this morning after hurricane harvey makes landfall. we will have a live report on the situation there. plus, a controversial rally in san francisco canceled. what organizers plan to do today instead. abc 7 news at 6:
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♪ ♪ ♪
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>> let's get up and get going. this is abc 7 mornings. >> today is saturday, august 26. good morning and thanks so much for joining us. i'm chris nguyen. starts start with a first look at the forecast. here is meteorologist lisa argen she's tracking live doppler 7 for us. >> good morning to you. our marine layer has shrunk, it is below 1,000 feet, but where we have it we're looking at some dense fog with mist and drizzle mainly along the golden gate bridge and a few areas inland where we talked about the reduced visibility a moment ago, overall we are looking at light winds and a big area of high pressure beginning to build and that's going to allow for temperatures to warm quickly. 60s from liver more to brentwood and mountain view, higher elevations

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