Humberto claims 1 in East Texas

Hurricane Humberto claimed the life of an Orange County man as the storm blasted East Texas with winds up to to 85 miles an hour this morning.

A man died when the carport at his northwest Bridge City home fell on him, Police Chief Steve Faircloth reported. Faircloth declined to identify the man until his relatives are notified.

The National Hurricane Center said just before 10 a.m. that Humberto had weakened to a tropical storm with top sustained winds of about 65 mph.

Humberto spared Galveston Island and other parts of Galveston County but the storm brought 16 inches of rain to the Bolivar Peninsula before landfall about 5 miles east of High Island, the National Weather Service reported.

Humberto didn't exist until late Wednesday afternoon, and wasn't even a tropical storm until almost midday, strengthening from a tropical depression with 35-mph winds to a hurricane with 85-mph winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"To put this development in perspective - no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, someday, why this happened,'' Franklin said.

The storm caused heavy damage on the Bolivar Peninsula and in the High Island community near the intersection of Highways 124 and 87. On Highway 24 entering the community, motorists were blocked late this morning by a huge tree limb downed by the storm. Trees were down all over the community.

High Island High School's football stadium was badly damaged, with all four light poles destroyed, one broken completely in half. One of two football field scoreboards was completely destroyed and a press box at the baseball field was torn off the top of a set of bleachers.

At the High Island Food Mart, the roof was ripped half off and the canopy that had sheltered people getting gas was torn loose, dumped in the parking lot near the pumps.

The High Island Post Office was damaged, left with insulation hanging out of its roof. A chain-link fence in front of the High Island Craft Shop was knocked down.

Signs of Humberto's destruction became most apparent beginning about three miles south of High Island on Highway 87. There, a long string of about 30 wooden power poles were splintered and the power lines downed.

Highway 87 runs the length of the peninsula, through Crystal Beach to the Bolivar Ferry landing. Separated from the water in some areas only by a sand dune and a tiny strip of beach, the road is the lifeline of the peninsula, where thousands of people have weekend resort homes and new subdivisions are under development.

East of Gilchrist on the the peninsula, Avery Martin checked out the remains of his business, Rockys RV Park and Fishing Pier.

"When Rita came through, I didn't have any damage at all," said Martin, 44, of Dallas, referring to Hurricane Rita that caused widespread destruction in the area.

Martin's fishing pier was destroyed and three mobile homes on the property were flipped over by winds.

"Rita didn't do anything," Martin said. "It was minimal compared to what this did."

Martin said damage to his business will run in the tens of thousands of dollars.

In Beaumont, police said winds destroyed a new roof on the landmark Julie Rogers Theater, caused leaks in the police headquarters and damaged other buildings.

Uprooted trees caused at least two suspected natural gas line breaks that were being investigated by firefighters, Beaumont police Officer Crystal Holmes said. Traffic signals lost power and police were dealing with several accidents at intersections where drivers failed to stop and look before crossing, she said.

"We have experienced significant street flooding," Holmes said. "We have a number of underpasses that that are holding water and vehicles."

Police waded into the water to make sure no one was in them and had no victims, Holmes said..

Many powers lines were down in the city as well, Holmes said.

Authorities in the storm area advised people to stay home as the storm, which maintained hurricane-force winds of more than 80 mph five hours after coming ashore, moved into southwest Louisiana. Most area schools were closed as power company Entergy reported more than 110,000 customers without power.

Along with the Bolivar deluge, Humberto pounded Chambers, Jefferson and Orange counties.

In Bridge City, residents awoke today to flying pieces of debris, waving power poles and the sounds of roaring winds as the city took the brunt of Hurricane Humberto. The center of the storm moved across the City of Orange at 5:45 a.m., said Michael Marcotte, a meteorologist at the weather service office in Lake Charles, La.

Marcotte said he was on the telephone with a Port Arthur resident early this morning when the man described the roof of an apartment building near his home blowing off and landing on four vehicles parked nearby.

Power was out in most of Bridge City and Orange County. On the south end of Bridge City's Texas Avenue, wind ripped metal from the roof of a shopping center.

In Beaumont at 5 a.m., water was knee-deep in some streets in Old Town, road underpasses were flooded and trees and power lines were reported down throughout the city.

Entergy spokeswoman Debi Derrick said after sunrise that the company knew of at least 50 power poles that were damaged or destroyed and the damage assessment was not complete.

Most of the outages occurred in Jefferson and Orange counties and on Bolivar Peninsula, Derrick said. It could take days to restore power to some areas, she said.

Derrick said Entergy will have help from other power companies, which were gearing up Wednesday before Humberto became a full-fledged hurricane.

The Beaumont fire department had received several calls about cars being submerged in high water but had not had to rescue anyone, a dispatcher said.

The Category 1 storm came ashore in a sparsely populated area at Sea Rim State Park near High Island, with wind gusts measuring up to 62 mph, meteorologist Jim Sweeney said. Then it headed for Beaumont and other densely populated areas, some of whose residents still are recovering from Hurricane Rita damage

The storm was tightly wound at landfall, with hurricane-force winds extending out less than 20 miles from the center, the weather service reported.