Imelda soaks eastern Texas, forces rescues
CHINA, Texas — The slow-churning remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda dangerously flooded parts of Texas and Louisiana on Thursday, scrambling rescue crews and volunteers with boats to reach scores of stranded drivers and families trapped in their homes during a relentless downpour that drew comparisons to Hurricane Harvey two years ago.
Officials in Harris County, which includes Houston, said there had been at least 1,000 high-water rescues and evacuations to get people to shelter. More than 900 flights were canceled or delayed in Houston, and further along the Gulf Coast, authorities at one point warned that a levee near Beaumont may fail.
A 19-year-old man was killed while trying to move his horse to safety, according to a message shared by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Spokeswoman Crystal Holmes said the death occurred during a lightning storm. Authorities elsewhere reported no loss of life or major injuries as of late afternoon Thursday.
The National Weather Service said Jefferson County was deluged with rain estimated at over 40 inches in 72 hours, which would make it the seventh-wettest tropical cyclone in U.S. history.
Even when Houston was rid of the worst, downtown highways remained littered with abandoned cars submerged in water. Thousands of drivers were at a practical standstill on narrowed lanes near flooded banks.
“The water kept rising. It kept rising. I couldn’t believe it,” said Ruby Trahan Robinson, 63. She uses a wheelchair and had a portable oxygen tank while getting settled into a shelter at City Hall in the town of China, just outside Beaumont.
“It rolled in like a river,” she said.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner evoked the memory of Harvey — which dumped over 50 inches of rain on the nation’s fourthlargest city in 2017 — while pleading with residents to stay put. City officials said they had received more than 1,500 high-water rescue calls to 911, most from drivers stuck on flooded roads, but authorities said a number of them were from people who were inconvenienced and not in immediate danger.
Ahead of the evening rush hour, Houston officials urged commuters to stay at work rather than embark on f looded and already jammed highways. The Houston Independent School District — Texas’ largest with more than 200,000 students — did not cancel classes or shorten the day unlike neighboring districts in the storm’s path.
Imelda is the first named storm to affect the Houston area since Harvey hovered for days and inundated the Gulf Coast, dumping over 5 feet of water near the Louisiana state line. Now, two years later, it looked in some places like Harvey was playing out all over again.
A massive Houston furniture store became a shelter for evacuees. Live television footage showed firefighters rescuing stranded truckers on major highways. Some people asked for help over social media, saying that water was quickly seeping into their homes.
Large swaths of Interstate 10 were turned into waterways and closed. And even as the storm weakened, Harris County officials warned that some of their 4.7 million residents might not see high waters recede in their neighborhoods until the weekend.
“We’re still putting water on top of water,” said Jeff Linder, meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District.
In Winnie, a town 60 miles east of Houston, a hospital was evacuated. Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said that emergency workers had done over 300 rescues overnight and that some residents were on their roofs because of rising water.
The Jefferson County Sheriff ’s Office said on Facebook that residents near a deteriorating levy should use their boats to help neighbors get to safety.
Following Harvey, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ordered a report warning that punishing storms would become more frequent because of a changing climate.
Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme weather, but without extensive study they cannot directly link a single weather event to the changing climate.
Climate change skepticism runs deep among GOP leaders in Texas, and Abbott has said it is “impossible” for him to say whether manmade global warming is causing the kind of disasters the state is seeing.
The National Hurricane Center said Imelda weakened to a tropical depression after making landfall as a tropical storm Tuesday near Freeport, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph.
The f looding from Imelda came as Hurricane Humberto blew off rooftops and toppled trees in the British Atlantic island of Bermuda, and Hurricane Jerry was expected to move to the northern Leeward Islands on Friday and north of Puerto Rico on Saturday.