HARVEY RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE
Cities east of devastated Houston take the brunt of storm’s second landfall
“Somewhere between being complacent and being panicked is the right place (to be).” LOUISIANA GOV. JOHN BEL EDWARDS TO STATE RESIDENTS
The storm once known as Hurricane Harvey made its second landfall Wednesday, dumping record rains and spurring additional flooding in small Texas cities that lie east of now-devastated Houston.
Harvey, which had swung out into the Gulf of Mexico again, came ashore at dawn near the Texas-Louisiana border. Its rain bands preceded it, pounding Texas towns including Orange, Port Arthur and Beaumont with more than 60 centimetres.
City officials said much of Port Arthur — a city of 55,000 — was under water. A shelter for flood victims flooded. One official estimated that water had entered one-third of the city’s buildings.
“We need boats. We need large trucks, and we need generators,” said Tiffany Hamilton, a former city councillor in Port Arthur who was helping co-ordinate relief efforts in a city that is also without electricity. “The entire city has been flooded.”
About 130 kilometres to the west, the Houston area was just beginning to recover from the biggest rainstorm in the recorded history of the continental United States.
Nearly 35,000 people were in shelters. Thousands of homes were still submerged. At least 37 people were reported dead, and that number was climbing as water receded, revealing the awful toll.
Harris County authorities finally located a van, containing six members of the same family, that had been washed off the road days earlier. All six were dead.
A few kilometres away, authorities discovered the bodies of two friends who had gone out in a boat Monday, trying to rescue neighbours.
They lost control in the current, drifted toward the sparks of a downed power line, and fell in.
Three other men, including two journalists from a British newspaper, suffered electrical burns but survived by clinging to a tree.
Forecasters downgraded Harvey to a tropical depression from a tropical storm late Wednesday but it still has lots of rain and potential damage to spread, with between 10 and 20 centimetres forecast from the Louisiana-Texas line into Tennessee and Kentucky through Friday. Some spots may get as much as 30 centimetres, raising the risk of more flooding.
For much of the Houston area, forecasters said the rain was mostly over. “We have good news,” said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. “The water levels are going down.” Houston’s two major airports were up and running again Wednesday.
Meanwhile, another crisis emerged at a chemical plant about 40 kilometres northeast of Houston.
Aspokesperson for the Arkema Inc. plant in Crosby, Texas, said that the flooded facility had lost power and backup generators, leaving it without refrigeration for chemicals that become volatile as the temperature rises.
“The fire will happen. It will resemble a gasoline fire. It will be explosive and intense in nature,” said Janet Hill, spokeswoman for the French company. The last of the plant’s employees evacuated on Tuesday and residents within 2.4 kilometres were told to leave, Hill said.
Louisiana officials, who had worried Harvey might devastate their state as well, said the threat of flooding seemed to be lessening. “Somewhere between being complacent and being panicked is the right place (to be),” said Gov. John Bel Edwards. “That’s where we’re going to ask the people of Louisiana to settle.”
More than 125 centimetres of rain fell onto Houston over four days, turning the fourth-largest city in the U.S. into a sea of muddy brown water, boats skimming along what had been neighbourhood streets in search of survivors.
At the height of the flooding, between 25 and 30 per cent of Harris County — home to 4.5 million people in Houston and its near suburbs — was flooded as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Lindner. That is an area as large as New York City and Chicago combined.
More than195,000 people have registered for federal assistance, a number that is expected to go up, William (Brock) Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Manage- ment Agency (FEMA), said during a news briefing. It will take “many, many years” before the full scope of Harvey’s impact is clear, Long said.
About 10,000 more National Guard troops are being deployed to Texas, bringing the total to 24,000, Gov. Greg Abbott said.