WATERY GRAVE
6 family members die in flood-swamped van Harvey toll at 31 & rising, $75B in damage
Six bodies were found in submerged van in Houston on Wednesday as across Texas, families prayed loved ones weren’t among uncounted dead and missing.
AS THE Texas floodwaters finally receded, the horrors began to emerge.
The bodies of six members of a Houston family were recovered Wednesday from their van, days after surging waters swept the vehicle into a muddy stretch of Greens Bayou.
Relatives of the victims journeyed to the bridge where the van disappeared to find an ominous sight: Two bodies visible in the front seat of the submerged vehicle. Officials arrived to discover the bodies of four children, ages 6 to 16, in the back of the van.
Survivor Samuel Saldivar, the driver, was pulled to safety with a rope and stood by helplessly while his family perished.
They joined the growing death toll from Harvey, as it climbed to 31 Wednesday and officials warned more bodies were likely lurking inside cars and homes swamped during the last six days of massive flooding.
“Unfortunately, it seems that our worst thoughts are being realized,” said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, even as the sun shone down on Houston for the first time since last week.
The number of fatalities could increase rapidly, with autopsies still pending on several bodies in the Houston morgue to determine if they were victims of the storm, which was downgraded to a tropical depression by the National Hurricane Center late Wednesday.
Local first responders, frazzled by a constant flood of calls for rescue assistance, had little time to hunt for those reported missing since the weekend. In Houston alone, more than 8,500 people were rescued.
One rescuer said as many as half the residents of Katy, Tex., population 17,000, remained hunkered down in their homes.
All across Texas, anxious families prayed their loved ones weren’t among the uncounted dead and missing since the storm made landfall Friday night.
Those bodies recovered already tell the silent, tragic tale of people in the wrong place at the wrong time during the killer storm that wreaked havoc on the Lone Star State.
And in Beaumont, Tex., the body of a drowned mother — with her shivering 3-year-old daughter clinging to the corpse’s back — was pulled Tuesday from a canal, police said.
Colette Sulcer, 41, was trying to carry her daughter to safety when the two disappeared, and she likely saved her child’s life. Mother and daughter were whipped a half mile down a raging stream before rescuers caught up with the pair.
Sulcer was already dead, but her daughter was alive.
“I envision what I would do if that was me in that situation, and that’s what I would do: I would put my child on my back and try to swim to safety or whatever,” said Beaumont Police Officer Haley Morrow.
The little girl, other than receiving treatment for hypothermia, was doing well, police said.
Family members were crushed when their worst fears were confirmed, and the local search crews were also struggling with the situation.
“It’s extra hard, especially when children might be involved,” said the sheriff.
Relatives of the missing turned to social media, posting thousands of pictures on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter as they prayed for a positive outcome.
For the family of 8-month-old Paige Booth, the constant sharing of baby photos led to an improbable reunion. The little girl disappeared Monday as her family evacuated their Houston home.
Mom Bajauh Henix was holding the child over her head in the pouring rain and rising water, and handed Paige over to a cop on a personal watercraft. He took the child to higher ground, but Paige was missing when her mother arrived.
Within four hours of launching their social media campaign, mother and child were reunited.
“She was sweet,” said Paige’s grandmother Kennesha Grand. “She was dry. She was fed. She didn’t miss us.”
For the family of Ruben Jordan, there was no happy ending.
The 58-year-old former football and track coach was helping rescue people trapped by the storm when he disappeared Saturday night. His family soon posted a digital flyer on Facebook and Twitter.
“Please help,” his relatives implored. “His family is desperately awaiting any information.”
Forty-eight hours later, police in Friendswood, Tex., reached the family with words of Jordan’s death.
Jordan, a high school teammate of Pro Football Hall of Famer Earl Campbell, had retired a year earlier after 34 seasons of coaching.
“Our family would like to extend our sincere appreciation and thanks for the effort, support and prayers we received while trying to locate him,” the Jordans posted on Facebook after receiving the news.
The hunt for both the living and the dead was complicated by the flooding, although officials had reason for optimism.
Most of the Houston-area rivers and other waterways had already crested, with the water level finally starting to drop “for the first time in days,” said Jeff Lindner of the Harris County Flood Control District.
Authorities were using heat maps and 11 Coast Guard planes Wednesday to locate residents still stranded in and around waterlogged Houston, officials said.
“These aren’t numbers,” said Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft. “These are people.”