Harvey's Continued Wrath: Much Of Rockport Will Not Be Rebuilt, Per Mayor

VICTORIA, TX — Rockport Mayor Charles "C.J." Wax said during a panel discussion Tuesday that much of his town will not be rebuilt after the devastation from Hurricane Harvey in August. Harvey slammed the small coastal fishing town as a powerful Category 4 storm, leveling many buildings and crippling the city's infrastructure.

Wax said Harvey destroyed about a third of the town, and that a large chunk of that will probably never be rebuilt. The mayor said 300 businesses out of the 1,300 in Rockport have reopened since Harvey came ashore in August, but up to 35 percent will never reopen. Wax said at a forum Tuesday in Victoria that as many people know Rockport as the city of trees, most were lost as crews removed nearly 800,000 cubic yards of vegetative debris.

Wax joined by three other local mayors of communities destroyed by Harvey in a discussion hosted by the Texas Tribune. Port Aransas Mayor Charles Bujan said 75 percent of the homes in the quaint tourist town were either severely damaged or destroyed.

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According to the Texas Tribune, "Of Rockport’s 2,400 students, 856 have left the school district. Port Lavaca saw a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet. In Port Aransas, the tax base has shrunk from $2.9 billion to $1.6 billion. There was one fatality in Victoria. The statistics alone demonstrate the staggering damage that Harvey wrought on these coastal communities — and they show just how long it will take to rebuild."

Image: A city flag, tattered by the effects of Hurricane Harvey, flaps in the wind over the police station, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2017, in Rockport, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)