HAVOC FROM HARVEY
regarding deaths — The Washington Post reported 22 dead.
Early estimates on economic losses range from $42 billion to more than $100 billion.
A pair of 70-year-old reservoir dams that protect downtown Houston and a levee in a suburban subdivision began overflowing Tuesday, adding to the rising floodwaters.
Engineers began releasing water from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs Monday to ease the strain on the dams. But the releases were not enough to relieve the pressure after the downpours, Army Corps of Engineers officials said. Both reservoirs are at record highs.
Water in the Houston Ship Channel, one of the nation’s busiest waterways, which serves the Port of Houston and Houston’s petrochemical complex, is at levels never seen before, Linder said.
The San Jacinto River, which empties into the channel, has pipelines and roads and bridges not designed for the current deluge, Linder said, and the chance of infrastructure failures will increase the “longer we keep the water in place.”
Among the worries is debris coming down the river and crashing into structures and the possibility that pipelines in the riverbed will be scoured by swift currents. In 1994, a pipeline ruptured on the river near Interstate 10 and caught fire.
The five days of rain in Cedar Bayou, near Mont Belvieu, Texas, totaled 51.88 inches as of Tuesday afternoon. That’s a record for both Texas and the continental United States, but it does not quite surpass the 52 inches from Tropical Cyclone Hiki in Kauai, Hawaii, in 1950, before Hawaii became a state.
The previous record was 48 inches set in 1978 in Medina, Texas, by Tropical Storm Amelia. A weather station southeast of Houston reported 49.32 inches of rain.
Before it breaks up, Harvey could creep as far east as Mississippi by Thursday, meaning New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina unleashed its full wrath in 2005, is in Harvey’s path. Foreboding images of Harvey lit up weather radar screens on the 12th anniversary of the day Katrina made landfall in Plaquemines Parish.