Evacuations ordered as US cities brace for Hurricane Harvey

Several US cities began ordering evacuations on Thursday as major storm Harvey was upgraded to hurricane status on its path towards hundreds of miles of coastline in Texas and Louisiana — an area that processes some 7 million barrels of oil a day.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that Harvey was "rapidly intensifying" and creating a potential for "life-threatening and devastating" floods. 

The storm's centre was due to make landfall sometime early Saturday, with preceding strong winds arriving as early as 8 am (1300 GMT) on Friday.

The NHC said Harvey strengthened to a category 2 storm, and could hit land as a much more powerful category three, with winds of 209km per hour — which would make it the strongest to hit the US mainland in 12 years.

"It's a very dangerous storm," National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini said. 

"It does have all the ingredients it needs to intensify. And we're seeing that intensification occur quite rapidly."

TRT World's Giles Gibson has the latest from Washington.

Heavy rainfall expected 

It was also menacing one-third of the US refining capacity, forcing several energy companies to take precaution.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued disaster declarations in 30 counties, saying the preemptive move would allow the state "to quickly deploy resources for the emergency response effort." 

Officials in Houston, the biggest city in the path of the storm, said that they did not anticipate issuing evacuation orders, but expected heavy rainfall to last up to five days. 

Corpus Cristi — a major oil refining centre where the hurricane was projected to make landfall Saturday morning — issued voluntary evacuation orders. 

"I hope people will listen to forecasters when they say 'beware of flash floods,'" Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb told residents of the Texas city nearest to expected landfall.

 "Flash floods can come quickly, and they can be deadly." 

US President Donald Trump weighed in with a tweet: "As #HurricaneHarvey intensifies — remember to #PlanAhead."

Harvey was also expected to deluge flood-prone New Orleans in neighbouring Louisiana, where catastrophic Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused widespread flooding and killed more than 1,800 people.

In Louisiana, where the storm was forecast to hover for many days, Governor John Edwards said hundreds of boats had been prepositioned around the state, along with more than half a million sandbags. 

"Greatest risk to refiners"

According to analyst Phil Flynn of the Price Futures Group, the region is vital to the US refining industry "running about seven million barrels a day."

"Harvey's greatest risk to refiners is not just wind damage to the refineries, but also the associated rainfall and the potential for electric power failure," said James Williams of WTRG Economics. 

Should a refinery shut down, he said it could take a week to get it up and running again.

"With this system's intensity and slow motion, it is the worst of both worlds," said John Tharp, a forecaster with Weather Decision Technologies in Norman, Oklahoma. 

"There will be major impacts along the coast and inland with periods of prolonged rain."