Houston’s death toll climbs as water drops
Officials criticized for not supplying shelters quicker
The death toll in Houston rose as Harvey’s floodwaters started dropping and the sun came out yesterday — revealing the scope of the damage even as the storm doubled back toward land and pounded communities farther east, near the Texas-Louisiana line.
The receding murky green floodwaters from the record-breaking, 4-foot deluge of rain began yielding up bodies as predicted.
The confirmed death toll climbed to 31, including six family members — four of them children — whose bodies were pulled Wednesday from a van that had been swept off a Houston bridge into a bayou.
Authorities are investigating at least 17 more deaths to determine whether they were storm-related.
“Unfortunately, it seems that our worst thoughts are being realized,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said after the van that disappeared over the weekend was found in 10 feet of muddy water.
While conditions in the nation’s fourth-largest city appeared to improve, authorities warned that the crisis in Houston and across the region is far from over. The storm, in fact, took a turn for the worse east of the city, close to the Louisiana line.
Forecasters predicted that a wobbling and weakening Harvey, downgraded to a tropical depression, will completely dissipate within three to four days.
Meanwhile, Red Cross volunteers from Massachusetts, short on sleep with frayed nerves, are “struggling on,” buoyed by their commitment and the countless lives they’ve touched, a team captain told the Herald.
The storm’s victims are “what makes you go through all of the hardships. Just the gratitude and the appreciation you get from pulling a child out of a boat and giving them a blanket, or someone you rescued after they walked a mile or more through water to get to higher ground. Sometimes they can’t even begin to express it, they’re just so overwhelmed by their appreciation,” Robert Picard, 66, of Brookline, said yesterday from the headquarters of American Red Cross’ disaster-relief operations in southern Houston. Both FEMA and the Red Cross have been criticized by local officials for failing to get supplies to shelters fast enough, but the relief agencies noted with airports closed and land routes flooded, the enormity of the disaster had overwhelmed their capacity.
“This is worse than almost anything we’ve ever been to,” Picard said. “Everyone has a good sense of purpose of what we’re doing. We all look out for each other just to keep our spirits going.”
Picard, a retired economics professor and mass-care leader for Red Cross, said he’s “exhausted,” having arrived in Houston before Harvey hit Friday night in order to take charge of setting up shelter and feeding operations from Corpus Christi, Texas, to the Louisiana border.