Trump outlines effort
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sought to showcase the federal government’s response to Hurricane Harvey in a tweetstorm Sunday, marveling over its size and announcing a Tuesday visit to Texas with the natural disaster beginning to take its catastrophic toll.
In a series of tweets, Trump said his administration was handling its responsibilities well and, in an aside, hawked a book on race and crime in America written by a supporter.
“Wow — Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!”
He later added: “Even experts have said they’ve never seen one like this!”
Harvey is the first major natural disaster of Trump’s presidency and a significant test for the White House.
‘I live in a lake’
Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center was quickly opened as a shelter. It was also used as a shelter for Katrina refugees in 2005.
Gillis Leho arrived there soaking wet. She said she awoke Sunday to find her downstairs flooded. She tried to move some belongings upstairs, then grabbed her grandchildren.
“When they told us the current was getting high, we had to bust a window to get out,” Leho said.
William Cain sought shelter after water started coming inside his family’s apartment and they lost power. “I live in a lake where there was once dryland,”hesaid.
Some people used inflatable beach toys, rubber rafts and even air mattresses to get through the water to safety. Others waded while carrying trash bags stuffed with their belongings and small animals in picnic coolers.
Deteriorating situation
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said authorities had received more than 2,000 calls for help, with more coming in. He urged drivers to stay off roads to avoid adding to the number of those stranded.
“I don’t need to tell anyone this is a very, very serious and unprecedented storm,” Turner said at a news conference. “We have several hundred structural flooding reports. We expect that number to rise pretty dramatically.”
The deteriorating situation was bound to provoke questions about the conflicting advice given by the governor and Houston leaders before the hurricane. Gov. Greg Abbott urged people to flee from Harvey’s path, but the Houston mayor issued no evacuation orders and told everyone to stay home.
The governor refused to point fingers on Sunday.
“Now is not the time to second-guess the decisions that were made,” Abbott, a Republican, said at a news conference in Austin. “What’s important is that everybody work together to ensure that we are going to, first, save lives and, second, help people across the state rebuild.”
The mayor, a Democrat, defended his decision, saying there was no way to know which parts of the city were most vulnerable.
“If you think the situation right now is bad, and you give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare,” Turner said, citing the risks of sending the city’s 2.3 million inhabitants onto the highways at the same time.
Water ‘chest- to shoulder-deep’
Jesse Gonzalez and his son, also named Jesse, used their boat to rescue people from a southeast Houston neighborhood. Asked what he had seen, the younger Gonzalez replied: “A lot of people walking and a lot of dogs swimming.”
“It’s chest- to shoulder-deep out there in certain areas,” he told television station KTRK as the pair grabbed a gasoline can to refill their boat.
The Coast Guard deployed five helicopters and asked for additional aircraft from New Orleans.
The rescues unfolded a day after Harvey settled over the Texas coastline. The system weakened Saturday to a tropical storm.
On Sunday, it was virtually stationary about 25 miles northwest of Victoria, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of about 40 mph, the hurricane center said.
Harvey was the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in 13 years and the strongest to strike Texas since 1961’s Hurricane Carla, the most powerful Texas hurricane on record.