Scale of destruction
• Nearly 35,000 people had taken refuge in 231 shelters.
• Officials said 294,000 people remained without power from Corpus Christi to Port Arthur, Texas.
• In counties declared a disaster area, only 16 percent of homes — about 400,000 so far — have flood insurance.
HOUSTON» Harvey’s floodwaters started dropping across much of the Houston area and the sun came out Wednesday in a glimmer of hope for the stricken city.
The scope of the devastation caused by the hurricane came into sharper focus, and the murky green floodwaters from the record-breaking, 4-foot deluge of rain began yielding bodies, as predicted.
The confirmed death toll climbed to 31, including six family members — four of them children — whose bodies were pulled Wednesday from a van that had been swept off a Houston bridge into a bayou.
Authorities are investigating a dozen more deaths to determine whether they were storm-related.
“Unfortunately, it seems that our worst thoughts are being realized,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said after the van that disappeared over the weekend was found in 10 feet of muddy water.
For much of the Houston area, forecasters said the rain is pretty much over.
“We have good news,” said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. “The water levels are going down.”
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the city’s two major airports would be up and running again in the afternoon.
At Hermann Park, south of downtown, children glided by in strollers and wagons. Joggers took in midday runs, and couples walked beside cascading fountains and beneath a sparkling sun. People pulled into drive-thru restaurants and emerged from stores with groceries.
At the same time, many thousands of Houston-area homes are under water and could stay that way for days or weeks. And Lindner cautioned that homes near at least one swollen bayou could still get flooded.
Officials said 911 centers in the Houston area are getting more than 1,000 calls an hour from people seeking help.
In Houston’s flooded Meyerland neighborhood, hundreds of families emptied their homes of sodden possessions under a baking sun as the temperature climbed into the 90s. They piled up couches, soggy drywall and carpets ripped out of foul-smelling homes where the floodwaters had lingered for more than 24 hours.
The curbs were lined with the pickups of cleanup contractors and friends.
Altogether, more than 1,000 homes in Texas were destroyed and approximately 50,000 damaged. More than 32,000 people were in shelters across the state, emergency officials reported. About 10,000 more National Guard troops are being deployed to Texas, bringing the total to 24,000, Gov. Greg Abbott said.
“This is going to be an incredibly large disaster,” Brock Long, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in Washington. “We’re not going to know the true cost for years to come . ... But it’s going to be huge.”