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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Aug. 25, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 056 ~ 34 of 65
“We are closing down,” said Bethany Martinez, a front desk clerk at a Holiday Inn Express at Port Aran- sas. The 74-room hotel a couple of blocks from the Gulf of Mexico was about two-thirds full before all guests were cleared out.
This would be the rst hurricane for Martinez, who is pregnant and has two boys, 5 and 6. They were with grandparents in Austin.
Asked about her demeanor, she replied: “Afraid.”
Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi was airlifting at least 10 critically ill, mostly premature infants from its neonatal intensive care unit to Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth. They were expected to ar- rive by early Friday. Cook transport director Debbie Boudreaux said Driscoll was moving the infants inland for fear that power outages might disable their ventilators.
Harvey would be the rst signi cant hurricane to hit Texas since Ike in September 2008 brought winds of 110 mph (177 kph) to the Galveston and Houston areas and in icted $22 billion in damage. It would be the rst big storm along the middle Texas coast since Hurricane Claudette in 2003 caused $180 million in damage.
It’s taking aim at the same vicinity as Hurricane Carla, the largest Texas hurricane on record. Carla came ashore in 1961 with wind gusts estimated at 175 mph and in icted more than $300 million in damage. The storm killed 34 people and forced about 250,000 people to evacuate.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump was “briefed and will continue to be updated as the storm progresses.”
In Houston, one of the nation’s most ood-prone cities, Bill Pennington was philosophical as he prepared his one-story home for what he expected would be its third invasion of oodwaters in as many years and the fth since 1983.
“We know how to handle it. We’ll handle it again,” Pennington said he told his nervous 9-year-old son.
Dozens were in lines early Thursday at a Corpus Christi Sam’s Club, at home improvement stores and supermarkets. The city also was passing out sandbags.
Alex Garcia bought bottled water, bread and other basics in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land after dropping his daughter off at college. He said grocery items were likely more available in Houston than back home in Corpus Christi, where Garcia, a beer distributor salesman, said stores were “crazy.”
“We’ll be selling lots of beer,” he laughed.
Kim Fraleigh, of Sugar Land, stocked up with ve cases of water, three bags of ice and other supplies at a supermarket.
“We’ve got chips, tuna, dry salami, anything that does not require refrigeration,” she said.
Joey Garcia, director of the HEB store, said more than a semitrailer load of water was sold Wednesday, and he expected two more trailers on Thursday.
In Galveston, where a 1900 hurricane went down as the worst in U.S. history, City Manager Brian Maxwell said he was anticipating street ooding and higher-than-normal tides.
“Obviously being on an island, everybody around here is kind of used to it.”
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Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Houston; Seth Borenstein and Catherine Lucey in Washington;
Diana Heidgerd, Jamie Stengle and David Warren in Dallas; and videographer John Mone in Sugar Land contributed to this story.
Florida executes convicted double-murderer using new drug By JASON DEAREN, Associated Press
STARKE, Fla. (AP) — Florida on Thursday put a man to death with an anesthetic never used before in a U.S. lethal injection, carrying out its rst execution in more than 18 months on an inmate convicted of two racially motivated murders.
Authorities said 53-year-old Mark Asay, the rst white man executed in Florida for the killing of a black man, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Thursday at the state prison in Starke. Asay received a three-