Why wasn’t Houston evacuated?
Through Sunday morning, Harvey continued to unleash record levels of rain on Houston, causing “catastrophic” flooding in the city and in surrounding Harris County. At least one stormrelated death in Houston was reported on Sunday, after a woman was found dead by her water-deluged car.
Over 24 hours, the greater Houston and Galveston area received 24.1 inches (61 cm) of rain. The U.S. National Weather Service warned of “additional catastrophic, unprecedented and lifethreatening flooding” into the next week, and placed flash- flood emergencies for all of southeast Texas.
As the storm pummeled the country’s fourth- largest city — overwhelming the 911 system and sending some residents, against the advice of officials, into their attics to flee flood waters — many asked the question: Should Houston have been evacuated? If so, why wasn’t it?
At least one official thought it should have been.
At a Friday news conference, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged residents in lowlying and coastal areas of the state to evacuate, even if a mandatory evacuation order had not been issued.
“Even if an evacuation order hasn’t been issued by your local official, if you’re in an area between Corpus Christi and Houston, you need to strongly consider evacuating,” Abbott said. “What you don’t know, and what nobody else knows right now, is the magnitude of flooding that will be coming.
“You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you could be subject to a search and rescue.”
The governor’s warning was in sharp contrast to the advice local and county officials had been dispensing for days: to shelter and stay in place. And it set off a scramble by local officials on social media to tell their residents otherwise.
“LOCAL LEADERS KNOW BEST,” Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, tweeted in response to Abbott’s warning. There were no evacuation orders in Houston, and only ones in a few communities in Harris County, Sanchez stressed.
In a follow-up tweet, Sanchez urged residents to heed the advice of local officials like Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, rather than Abbott.
On Saturday morning, as Hurricane Harvey’s powerful winds and rain caused severe damage to coastal communities, the Houston mayor warned people there would be heavy rain and flooding in the city for the next four to five days — but once again emphasized they did not need to evacuate.
Turner also addressed concerns that Abbott and local officials had sent conflicting messages about what was safer: fleeing or staying in place.
“I think the governor and I both agree that this is a serious and unprecedented storm,” Turner said Saturday on Good Morning America. While everyone had agreed the southeast Texas cities of Victoria and Rockport needed to be evacuated, as they were in the direct line of the hurricane, Houston and Harris County were different.
“For Houston, Harris County, the county judge and I both agreed that for us this was a major rainfall event and so there was no need to evacuate. We are asking people to stay off the streets,” Turner said. “Quite frankly, leaving your homes, getting on the streets, you’ll be putting yourself in more danger and not making yourself safer. And so, we’re just asking people to hunker down.”
However, reports and images from Houston and Harris County showed it was increasingly difficult for people to do so.
“Volume- wise, this has likely reached the rainfall that fell during Allison in June 2001, and it continues to rain,” said the Weather Service office in College Park, Md., responsible for rainfall forecasts.