Harvey swamps Houston
The full extent of Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath started to come into chilling focus Sunday in Houston and across much of central Texas, as rain measured in feet, not inches, overwhelmed lakes, rivers and bayous, leaving several people dead and thousands displaced in a weather disaster described as “beyond anything experienced.”
Across the nation’s fourth-largest city and suburbs many miles away, families scrambled to get out of their fast-flooding homes. Rescuers — in many cases neighbors helping neighbors — in fishing boats, huge dump trucks and even front-end loaders battled driving rains to move people to shelter. Some used inflatable toys to ferry their families out of inundated neighborhoods, wading through chest-deep water on foot while the region was under nearconstant tornado watches.
By Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service — which tweeted the “beyond anything experienced” description that morning — was predicting that parts of Texas could receive nearly 50 inches of rain, the largest recorded total in the state’s history. It also warned that Harvey’s relentless downpours were expected to continue until late in the week and that flooding could become much more severe. More than 82,000 homes were without electricity in the Houston area by Sunday night as airports shuttered and hospitals planned evacuations.
Thousands of rescue missions have been launched across a large swath of Texas, and Republican Gov. Greg
Abbott said Sunday that more than 3,000 National Guard troops had been deployed to assist with relief efforts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said federal agencies have more than 5,000 employees working in Texas, and the White House said President Trump plans to visit parts of the state Tuesday.
Officials said Houston, a major center for the nation’s energy industry, had suffered billions of dollars in damage and would take years to fully recover. Oil and gas companies have shut down about a quarter of oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Spot prices for gasoline are expected to jump Monday, but the full extent of damage will not be clear for days, companies and experts said.
Harvey’s sheer size also became apparent Sunday as heavy rains and flooding were reported as far away as Austin and even Dallas. What started with a direct impact on the tiny coastal town of Rockport
on Friday night has turned into a weather disaster affecting thousands of square miles and millions of people.
In Austin, the Wilhelmina Delco Center, one of two Red Cross shelters in the city, had about 200 evacuees. Rain continued to fall steadily in Austin and river levels continued to rise. Precautionary sandbags were stacked against the shelter’s entrance.
Bristel Minsker, communications director for the Red Cross Central and South Texas region, said “things are changing quickly” as the organization prepares to scale up operations in the areas between Austin and Houston.
Police began to ask people with high-water vehicles and boats to assist in rescue efforts on streets where abandoned cars were completely submerged. Brays Bayou, a huge waterway crossing the southwestern part of the city, rose between 10 feet and 20 feet overnight and by Sunday morning was flowing over bridges in its path.
The Texas National Guard has deployed across the state, including engineers in Corpus Christi and an infantry search-and-rescue team in Rockport. Another searchand-rescue unit was staging in San Antonio and was likely to be deployed to affected areas shortly, officials said.
As the extent of the disaster
became clear at daylight, some criticized Houston officials for not calling for an evacuation of the city. Turner defended the decision not to evacuate, noting that it would be a “nightmare” to empty out the population of his city and the county all at once.
“You literally cannot put 6.5 million people on the road,” Turner said at a news conference.
The disaster unfolding in Houston appeared suddenly, starting with severe storms Saturday evening that came with slashing, sideways rain and almost uninterrupted lightning. By morning, a city that had been largely spared by Harvey’s initial pounding of coastal communities was flooded to devastating levels.
By 7 a.m. Central time, the National Weather Service had recorded close to 25 inches of rain around Houston. Warnings for flash flooding and tornadoes remained across the region, and storm surges were expected along the coast, bringing flooding to typically dry areas.
The Weather Service said that at least five people had been reported dead because of Harvey. Officials have confirmed that at least three people have died as a result of the storm, and officials in the hardest-hit counties expect that as the waters recede the number of fatalities will rise.
The first reported death came Saturday in Rockport. Officials said one person was killed after becoming stuck inside a house that caught fire during the storm.
About 9:15 p.m. Saturday, rescuers in southwest Houston recovered the body of a woman thought to have driven her car into floodwaters before attempting to escape on foot. Just two minutes earlier, police about 40 miles southeast in La Marque found the body of a 52-year-old homeless man in a Wal-Mart parking lot where there had been high water.
“No city can handle these kind of deluges. In our case, 23 inches overnight,” La Marque Mayor Bobby Hocking said, noting that the police department rescued approximately 30 families and brought them to city offices.
As it scrambled to open shelters across Texas, the Red Cross command center in Houston was “physically isolated” because of floodwaters, said Paul Carden, district director of Red Cross activities in south Texas, which includes Corpus Christi.
“The advice is, if you don’t have to be out, don’t be out,” said Bill Begley, a spokesman with the Joint Information Center. He said most of the calls for help the center had received had come from residents who tried to drive through the storm and got stuck in high water.