AUSTIN – Announcing that he was adding 20 counties to a state disaster declaration, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Saturday that “it will be several days before crews can address about 338,000 power outages.”

Speaking to reporters in a room in the State Operations Center, three floors beneath ground level at Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters, Abbott said that high winds from what started the day as Hurricane Harvey would prevent crews from fixing the outages in the coastal Corpus Christi and Port Lavaca areas. 

Outside the small room where reporters huddled together to get Abbott’s update, employees from state and federal agencies — FEMA, the National Weather Service, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and more — filled a much larger area where they sat at computer screens, monitoring the wind, water and information flow. 

Harvey was downgraded to a tropical storm as it stalled over Texas on Saturday after making landfall the previous night. Abbott said he’d deployed military forces and about 1,000 state employees to help with search and rescue efforts, plus some 80 Department of Public Safety personnel to Corpus Christi, where about 20 inches of rain had already fallen.

Abbott could not confirm any Harvey-related deaths and said it was “way too early” to give dollar estimates of the storm’s damage, but he said that about 230 buses are available to transport evacuees.

More than 100 bus trips have already been made.

The Red Cross has set up 21 shelters to accommodate those driven out by high winds and water. 

“Texas Parks and Wildlife has about 1,500 evacuees at state parks,” Abbott said.

A key concern, Abbott said, was the 20 to 30 inches of rain expected to fall as the storm continues to pound Texas in coming days.

“That is coming down on already saturated ground,” Abbott said. “There is potential for very dramatic flooding.”

The U.S. Geological Survey reported on Saturday afternoon that the Tres Palacios River had risen more than 20 feet near Midfield since Harvey made landfall, according to a USGS stream gage.

Midfield is about 40 miles northeast of Port Lavaca.

Counties added to the disaster declaration include: Atascosa, Bexar, Brazos, Caldwell, Cameron, Comal, Grimes, Guadalupe, Hardin, Jasper, Kerr, Lee, Leon, Madison, Montgomery, Newton, Tyler, Walker, Washington and Willacy.

The evacuees Abbott met during a Friday trip to San Antonio were “typical” Texans, he said and “resilient.” 

“They are receiving three meals a day,” he said. “They are so pleased to be alive.”

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.