Harvey lashes Texas with devastating rain
AT LEAST five people are dead and more than 1200 people have been rescued after Tropical Storm Harvey pummelled the US Gulf Coast with catastrophic rain.
Dozens of injuries have also been reported, prompting the US National Weather Service (NWS) to issue a dire warning as massive floods inundated Houston, Texas.
The service described the severe weather conditions were “beyond anything experienced” before.
Helicopters, boats and high-water vehicles swarmed around inundated Houston neighbourhoods, pulling people from their homes or from the turbid water, which was high enough in some places to gush into second floors.
The flooding was so widespread that authorities had trouble pinpointing the worst areas.
They urged people to get on top of their homes to avoid becoming trapped in attics and to wave sheets or towels to draw attention to their location.
Water levels are so high, the US Army Corps of Engineers will have to release water through two Houstonarea dams that are nearing capacity.
NBC Nightly News reported the water levels in the Barker and Addicks reservoirs were “unparalleled” in history. Water will be released into Houston’s already flooded Buffalo Bayou, which runs through downtown and neighbourhoods west of the city.
Harris County officials asked the public to contribute boats and high-water vehicles, which they said were “desperately” needed to help rescue people before nightfall.
At a news conference on Sunday, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said that “government assets are fully utilised,” and that boats from outside the area could not get there.
The NWS said some parts of Houston and just west of the city may receive a state record of 1270 millimetres of rain as the storm, downgraded from a hurricane, stalls over Texas.
Meteorologist Patrick Burke said rainfall totals will end up around 1016 millimetres or more for Houston on average.
The New York Post reports residents of a nursing home southeast of Houston had to be evacuated from waist-deep water.
Fifteen senior citizens were evacuated from the La Vita Bella nursing home in Dickinson, David Popoff, the city’s emergency management coordinator, told the Galveston County Daily News.
Mr Popoff told the newspaper all 15 were rescued by helicopter.
“We were air-lifting grandmothers and grandfathers,” Mr Popoff said.
A picture of the residents sitting in waist-deep water shared to Twitter on Sunday went viral after it was posted by Timothy McIntosh, who told the newspaper his mother-in-law owns the assistedliving home.
US President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday morning that he was chairing a cabinet meeting about the crisis.