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VICTORIA, Texas &#8212;Residents across the Texas Gulf Coast began to survey the damage Saturday after Hurricane Harvey came ashore Friday night as a powerful Category 4 storm, injuring at least 10, drenching low-lying coastal areas, tearing roofs off buildings and leaving nearly 300,000 without power.It was the first Category 4 hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Charley struck Florida in 2004, and the first to hit Texas since Hurricane Carla in 1961.The eye of the storm landed about 10 p.m. Friday near Rockport, a small fishing city about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, with 130 mph winds uprooting trees, tossing boats onto roads and demolishing homes and businesses.At least 10 people were treated for injuries at a local jail in Rockport after the roof of a senior citizens&#8217; complex collapsed, local media reported.&#8220;It&#8217;s about what you would expect if a Category 4 hurricane entered your front door,&#8221; said Rockport Mayor Charles &#8220;C.J.&#8221; Wax, who left the city for safety in San Antonio.Severe weather made it impossible for emergency assessment teams to venture into the city overnight, Wax said. Yet already officials had heard that the local high school had been damaged and the wall of a hotel had collapsed.In Victoria, a city of 62,000 people about 30 miles from the coast in southeast Texas, heavy rains pounded sideways Saturday morning as ferocious winds lashed the city.The streets were empty of cars and littered with downed trees and power lines. Several gas station overhangs had collapsed and fallen on top of the pumps. Water began to pool on neighborhood streets.At a Red Cross shelter, more than 300 residents huddled inside, slumped on cots as they awaited news about the storm.The danger was not over. Even as Harvey weakened to a Category 1 storm with 80 mph winds, weather officials warned millions of residents across Texas to expect &#8220;catastrophic&#8221; flooding, &#8220;life- threatening&#8221; storm surges and tornadoes as the storm slowly crept inland.&#8220;This is just the beginning,&#8221; said Jeff Evans, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Houston-Galveston office. &#8220;We could see catastrophic flooding for a lot of people, historic flooding for parts of Texas. We&#8217;re looking at measuring rainfall not in inches, but in feet.&#8221;What makes Harvey so potentially dangerous, even as it weakens, is that it will linger in the area, meteorologists say.&#8220;Typically, a hurricane comes in and pulls inland, but this is moving slowly, and it&#8217;s expected to stall, wobble and maybe loop back to where it came in,&#8221; Evans said.As Harvey approached Friday, a hurricane warning was in effect along a wide stretch of coastline from Port Mansfield to Sargent, spanning a region that in which about 4 million people live. An additional 12 million, many in the major cities of Houston and San Antonio, were under a tropical storm warning.On Saturday morning, the National Weather Service warned that some areas could get as much as 40 inches of rain &#8212; about the amount of rainfall many Texas coastal towns get in a year.It urged residents not to return to evacuated areas until hazardous winds weaken and floodwaters recede.Across the coast, some residents ventured out Saturday morning to check on family and friends. &#8220;It&#8217;s like a little ghost town,&#8221; Eddie Canales, 69, said as he drove his car across Corpus Christi &#8212; past broken fences, toppled trees and dark traffic lights &#8212; to check on his uncle and cousins.&#8220;There&#8217;s very little traffic. All the Whataburgers are closed &#8212; every single one of them.&#8221;The winds had calmed, and there was little floodwater, Canales said. With his house intact, his main concern was when power would be restored. Without it, he could not boil water.&#8220;Everything seems to be getting back to normal,&#8221; Canales said. &#8220;If electrical power comes back, I&#8217;ll be prepared. If not, I&#8217;ll have to move further inland.&#8221;Not long after the storm slammed onto shore between Port Aransas and Port O&#8217;Connor, there were news reports of damage.Part of a local high school also collapsed, and a portion of the exterior of a hotel peeled off in the heavy winds, KXAN reported.&#8220;People are trapped inside at least one collapsed building,&#8221; Rockport City Manager Kevin Carruth told KIII. &#8220;We can&#8217;t get rescue teams to them right now.&#8221;Shortly after midnight, the storm came ashore along the northeastern shore of Copano Bay and downgraded at that point to a Category 3 storm, the National Weather Service reported.Before Harvey, the most recent major hurricane to hit the U.S. was Wilma, a Category 3 storm in Florida in October 2005, two months after Hurricane Katrina.Historically, slow-moving tropical storms and hurricanes have caused some of Texas&#8217; most severe flooding. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison hovered above the Houston area for days, dumping up to 30 inches of rain &#8212; as much as 80 percent of the area&#8217;s average annual rainfall over some neighborhoods.The last hurricane to hit the Texas coast &#8212; Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm that wreaked havoc after making landfall in Galveston in 2008 &#8212; killed at least 37 people and resulted in more than $30 billion in damage.Hurricane Harvey poses the first major test of emergency response for the Trump administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency&#8217;s new administrator, Brock Long, who was confirmed in June.Trump plans to travel to Texas next week, homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said. Federal officials had significantly improved their ability to respond to natural disasters since Hurricane Katrina caused widespread flooding in New Orleans in 2005, and the president seemed determined to provide help to Texas.In some parts of Texas, residents were bombarded with contradictory advice from state and local officials as the storm approached.On Friday afternoon, Gov. Abbott urged residents of low-lying and coastal areas prone to flooding &#8212; including parts of Houston &#8212; to leave their homes.&#8220;What you don&#8217;t know and what nobody else knows right now is the magnitude of flooding that will be coming,&#8221; the governor said.Shortly afterward, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner reminded residents that city officials had not issued an evacuation order and urged them to stay in place, noting that residents fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005 had caused major traffic chaos.&#8220;Please think twice before trying to leave Houston en masse,&#8221; he said on Twitter. &#8220;No evacuation orders have been issued for the city.&#8221;With Houston forecast to get to 20 inches of rainfall, officials there were readying evacuation boats and high-water rescue vehicles.For days, Houston&#8217;sOffice of Emergency Management has urged residents to stockpile enough water, food and medication for five to seven days, secure anything that could be picked up by strong winds and park vehicles off the streets.The impact of the hurricane is likely to be felt in neighboring Louisiana, and Gov. John Bel Edwards Thursday declared a state of emergency Thursday for the entire state.Just a few inches of rain could cause severe problems in New Orleans, which is still recovering from flooding after thunderstorms this month overwhelmed the city&#8217;s drainage system.On Friday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu warned residents to prepare for 5 to 10 inches of rain. Yet New Orleans officials did not advise residents to leave, urging them instead to prepare to take shelter and stock up with at least three days&#8217; worth of supplies.&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;(Jarvie, a special correspondent, reported from Atlanta.)&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;(c)2017 Los Angeles TimesVisit the Los Angeles Times at <a href="http://www.latimes.com">www.latimes.com</a>Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/web1_118201100-93815200413d4d4eab553409d3005ef2-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The Rockport-Fulton high school gymnasium walls expose the interior after Hurricane Harvey ripped through Rockport, Texas, on Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017. The fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade spun across hundreds of miles of coastline where communities had prepared for life-threatening storm surges, walls of water rushing inland. (Nick Wanger/Austin American-Statesman via AP) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/web1_118201100-93815200413d4d4eab553409d3005ef2-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>The Rockport-Fulton high school gymnasium walls expose the interior after Hurricane Harvey ripped through Rockport, Texas, on Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017. The fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade spun across hundreds of miles of coastline where communities had prepared for life-threatening storm surges, walls of water rushing inland. (Nick Wanger/Austin American-Statesman via AP) </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Jenny Jarvie and Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times</bylineMeta></div>

Texas Gulf Coast assesses damage from Hurricane Harvey