Texas Lt Gov Issues Preemptive Disaster Declaration, Coastal Counties Issue Voluntary Evacuation Orders

July 5, 2024 News, Weather

Austin’s ABC affiliate reports:

Texas officials are urging people to stay prepared — and not panic — ahead of Beryl. In a briefing on Friday afternoon, acting Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said it is too early to know Beryl’s exact path and where it will make landfall but people should still plan ahead. (Abbott is out of the country for a pre-planned business trip.) Some counties have already issued voluntary evacuation orders in low-lying areas. In Corpus Christi, 10,000 sandbags were distributed in less than two hours Friday.

The Associated Press reports:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has issued a pre-emptive disaster declaration for 39 counties, which allows state and local authorities to start planning and contracting for response. Beryl hit Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane but weakened to a tropical storm as it moved across the peninsula. The U.S. National Hurricane Center expects Beryl to regain hurricane strength once it emerges into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Nim Kidd, chief of state emergency operations, said oil companies have started moving employees off oil rigs along the coast that may be in the path of the storm.

The Weather Channel reports:



The NWS expects outer winds to hit Texas Sunday morning, with the hurricane itself making landfall Sunday night or early Monday morning — by which point winds may lash interior cities like San Antonio, Victoria or Austin. Virtually all of the coastal cities in the hurricane’s potential path, from Brownsville to Corpus and particularly the region from Houston to Louisiana, are major hubs of petrochemical manufacture and petroleum refining — an industry at dramatic risk from hurricanes. In 2017, damage to Houston-area petrochemical infrastructure by Hurricane Harvey caused the release of more than a million pounds of toxic vapors,

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