Houston keeps parts of city flooded
Strategy safeguards other neighbourhoods in wake of Harvey’s devastation
HOUSTON — Officials in Houston sought Friday to safeguard parts of their devastated city by keeping others flooded in the wake of Harvey, which retained enough rain-making power to raise the risk of flooding in the middle of the U.S. a week after it slammed into Texas.
The mayor announced that ongoing releases of water from two reservoirs could keep thousands of homes flooded for up to 15 days and told residents that if they stayed and later needed help, first responders’ resources could be further strained.
In another Texas city with no drinking water, people waited in a line that stretched for more than a mile to get bottled water. And a new fire erupted Friday evening at a crippled Houston-area chemical plant that was the scene of an earlier explosion and fire.
Residents of the still-flooded western part of Houston were asked to evacuate due to the releases from two reservoirs protecting downtown. The ongoing releases were expected to keep flooded homes that had already been filled with water. Homes that are not currently flooded probably will not be affected, officials said.
It could take three months for the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, which are normally dry, to drain. The Harris County Flood Control District said the water releases had to continue to protect the reservoirs’ structural integrity and in case more heavy rain falls.
Some of the affected houses have several metres of water in them, and the water reaches to the rooftops of others, district meteorologist Jeff Lindner said.
Mayor Sylvester Turner pleaded for more high-water vehicles and more searchand-rescue equipment as the fourth-largest city in the U.S. continued looking for any survivors or corpses that might have somehow escaped notice in flood-ravaged neighbourhoods.
In Canada, the federal government and the governments of Ontario and Quebec are readying relief supplies, including baby formula and cribs, for shipment to Harvey’s victims in Texas and Louisiana.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the governments are working with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to co-ordinate the help.
The storm left vast swaths of Texas and parts of Louisiana flooded and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.
“We reached out to offer whatever support is needed, from airlift capacity to helicopters to whatever is necessary,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference Friday in Saskatoon.
FEMA, he said, responded by providing Goodale a list of badly needed provisions, and Canada was more than happy to oblige.
Goodale said the relief supplies include hygiene kits, bed pillows, bath towels, baby formula, baby disposable bottles, baby cribs and baby linens.
The Royal Canadian Air Force is preparing a cargo plane to fly the goods to Texas and it is expected to leave soon.
In Houston, search teams quickly worked their way down streets Friday, sometimes not even knocking on doors if there were obvious signs that all was well — organized debris piles or full cans of trash on the curb, for instance, or neighbours confirming that the residents had left.
Authorities considered it an initial search, though they did not say what subsequent searches would entail or when they would commence.
Authorities raised the death toll from the storm to 42 late Friday, while rescue workers conducted a block-by-block search of tens of thousands of Houston homes.
Turner also asked FEMA to provide more workers to process applications from thousands of people seeking government help. The mayor said he will request a preliminary aid package of $75 million US for debris removal alone.
The storm had lost most of its tropical characteristics but remained a source of heavy rain that threatened to cause flooding as far north as Indiana.
By Friday evening, Harvey had dumped more than 23 centimetres of rain in parts of Arkansas and Tennessee and more than 20 cm in spots in Alabama and Kentucky. Its remnants were expected to generate another 2.5 to eight cm over parts of Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia.
U.S. National Weather Service meteorologists expect Harvey to break up and merge with other weather systems over the Ohio Valley late today or Sunday.
More than 1,500 people were staying at shelters in Louisiana, and that number included people from communities in Texas. The state opened a seventh shelter Friday in Shreveport for up to 2,400 people, said Shauna Sanford, a spokeswoman for Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
The Texas city of Beaumont, home to almost 120,000 people near the Louisiana state line, was trying to bring in enough bottled water for people who stayed behind after a water pumping station was overwhelmed by the swollen Neches River.
The latest statewide damage surveys showed the extent of destruction. An estimated 156,000 dwellings in Harris County, or more than 10 per cent of all structures in the county database, were damaged by flooding, according to the flood control district for the county, which includes Houston. Lindner called that a conservative estimate.
Figures from the Texas Department of Public Safety indicated that nearly 87,000 homes had major or minor damage and at least 6,800 were destroyed.
Gov. Greg Abbott warned Friday in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America that it could take years for Texas to “dig out from this catastrophe.”
At the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, thick black smoke and towering orange flames shot up once again. The company has blamed the blasts and fires on floodwaters that engulfed the plant’s backup generators and knocked out the refrigeration necessary to keep unstable compounds from degrading and catching fire.
In Beaumont, people waited Friday in a line of cars that stretched more than a mile at a water-distribution centre at a high school football field. Each vehicle received one case. Earlier, people stood in line at a Kroger grocery store that was giving away gallon jugs of water, which were gone in two hours.
While city officials said little about plans to restore water service, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil, which has a refinery and chemical plants in Beaumont, said Friday that the company helped install a temporary intake pipe to the city’s treatment plant.
The water began pumping late Thursday and a little was flowing into some homes, but the water will not return to full pressure until the city refills reservoirs, spokeswoman Ashley Alemayehu said.
Harvey initially came ashore Aug. 25 as a Category 4 hurricane, then went back out to sea and lingered off the coast as a tropical storm for days. The storm brought five straight days of rain totalling close to 1.3 metres, the heaviest tropical downpour ever recorded in the continental U.S. • Far out over the Atlantic, hurricane Irma was following a course that could bring it near the eastern Caribbean Sea by early next week. The Category 2 storm was moving northwest at nearly 20 km/h. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect. • Tropical storm Lidia has caused four deaths in Mexico’s Los Cabos, officials said Friday as it continued to lash the resortstudded southern Baja California Peninsula with heavy rains.
Arturo de la Rosa Escalante, mayor of the twin resorts of Los Cabos, said two people were electrocuted by power lines, a woman drowned after being swept away by water on a flooded street and a baby was ripped from its mother’s arms as she crossed a flooded area.