Communication systems fail Rockport officials, delay rescue efforts
Inside a metal building that house the Fulton Volunteer Fire Department, firefighters listen to the walls shake violently as winds of up to 155 miles per hour whip through the seaside community.
Then, in an instant, the winds cease, and the men and women who stayed behind to save their community from Hurricane Harvey spring into action.
As the eye passed the city, crews took whatever vehicles they could find to gather anyone who wants to get to a safer place. Many homes already were destroyed.
Without cell phone signal, the crews were left to relay messages from driver-side windows as they crisscrossed the community.
Little did they know that their method would be authorities' only option for communications for hours after the storm passed.
The storm would claim at least one life in Aransas County and would injure 12 to 14 more residents. It's still not clear how many residents are unaccounted for. City and county leaders estimate about 9,800 people ignored the mandatory evacuation order and endured the deadly storm.
Search-and-rescue efforts in the communities hit hardest by the powerful category 4 storm didn't start early Saturday even though devastation was visible on nearly every corner.
"Right now we don't have any resources," said Rockport Police patrolman Dave Rollins. "We don't have no power, no water, no cell phones — it's going to be pretty tough."
The cause was visible across the county: Tall structures, trees and signs were folded with ease by the 130-mile-per-hour winds that enclosed the eye of the storm.
That included the signal tower outside the centrally located Rockport Police Department.
Emergency radio channels were unavailable, and first responders were limited to "shortwave radios that span only a couple miles," said Matt Jamison, a volunteer firefighter from Fulton.
"There's a lot of people using that one channel, and it's not really effective when you're trying to do a large-scale search-and-rescue (operation)," Jamison said.
Also complicating matters was the maze of demolished buildings, trees and power lines that covered most neighborhood streets in the region.
Many of the streets that weren't blocked by debris were flooded and only accessible with certain specialty vehicles.
In the interim, first responders faced difficult decisions — try to find cell phone signal to alert their families that they were OK and that reports of the fire station collapsing were false, or focus on helping victims of the storm.
"The only place we get cell phone service is the top of the bypass and overpass. That's it," Jamison said. "We can get it there, but we've got more important things to do."
By a 2 p.m. news conference, Aransas County Judge Burt Mills said search and rescue operations were underway, and would likely accelerate in the coming days with the arrival of state resources, such as Texas Task Force and the National Guard.
Military vehicles carrying the guardsmen began mobilizing by 5 p.m. at a partially destroyed vacant building that used to be an H-E-B grocery store.
"Assets are coming in fast," Mills said.
Still, the county has months of recovery ahead.
"We had a bunch of mini-tornadoes," Fulton Mayor Jimmy Kendrick said. "It's like a little kid had a temper and just tore everything up."
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