a reporter: i have to tell you, i ve covered hurricanes in the past, some dramatic ones. the hurricane comes in and then the hurricane leaves. it s erie on the ground because the bands of rain just keep oncoming over and over again and it is not clearing out. as you say, the storm has stalled and it is just sitting on top of this part of texas and that is what makes it so dangerous. but the difficulty right now i think for officials and the thing that they are going to have to battle is complacency. it s turning into a tropical storm as opposed to a full-blown hurricane. the people i spoke with today, some of them facing evacuation orders, are having a hard time kind of wrapping their head around the fact that it seemed fine. it seemed over, except that it s
she doesn t know what will happen next. we ve been hearing a lot about the fairfield hotel where storm chasers and media decided to stay. it was designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane but the wall of the building came crashing down. it was incredible to see the power of the storm and we were able to look at the ocean from the fourth floor. the rest of the building is still standing. the manager said he s never seen anything like it. this is an ongoing situation for the state of texas. we re getting a break in the rain here in rockport but other parts of the state are going to deal with this meandering storm for days. more than 1,000 people are still involved in search and rescue
toppled and power lines down. we want to go to gabe with more. gabe? reporter: this is rockport, texas. this home obliterated. several other homes and businesses in this downtown area also destroyed. at least 12 people were injured here in this county, according to the local officials. one person was killed in a house fire that local authorities say first responders just couldn t get to. this is where harvey s eye came crashing through. some local residents decided not to evacuate and said they regretted the decision. they said it was a terrifying ordeal and they were able to clearly remember the calm of the storm while they were inside the eye and then afterwards it just got that much worse. we spoke with one woman who rode out the storm with her boyfriend and sister and she thought she would not make it out alive. her home was destroyed.
you accept a pardon, you re saying that you re guilty and yet what is going on is this man is against the law and this is not how it s supposed to zork victoria, as a professor and helping to train future legal minds, do you tell students that a pardon is an admission of guilt? yes. there s a question of the constitutionality of it and the president was within his purview of doing that but then what precedent does this set for other sheriffs across the country, for other lawmakers. all right. i m not going to turn you into a weather reporter, although i see the rain behind you there. so we ll save that for later. i appreciate it. thank you very much. appreciate it. coming up, we re going to bring you the latest information on harvey. a tropical storm right now.
but then by the time we hit wednesday, winds are still at 35 miles per hour and produce a lot of rain and with that repetition of rain, again, today, tomorrow, monday, all the way through wednesday. a lot of rain on the way here to cause major flooding and we re watching for that as well. past amounts, looking at 13 inches. we ve got galveston at 6.81 and austin at 4.67 inches. the most is 40 inches in the heaviest spots. victoria could be one of them. we re keeping a close eye on the storm and we ll follow it all night long for. you we ve been following that for the last 24 hours. shanna, thank you so much. we ll talk later in this hour. we want to talk about the hurricane of headlines that came out of the white house yesterday with the presidential pardon of a man once called america s toughest sheriff. to some, former arizona sheriff