NO END IN SIGHT
Houston police chief ‘really worried about how many bodies we’re going to find’ as city braces for even more rain
As one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history pummelled southeast Texas for a fourth day, forecasts on Monday called for still more rain, making clear that catastrophic flooding that had turned neighbourhoods into lakes was just the start of a disaster that would take years to overcome.
Local, state and federal officials conceded that the scale of the crisis was so vast that they were nowhere near being able to measure it, much less fully address it.
Across a region that is home to millions of people and includes Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States, no one has a clear idea how many people are missing, how many evacuated, how many hunkered down or were trapped in their waterlogged homes, or how many inundated houses and vehicles are beyond saving.
It is “one of the largest disasters America has ever faced,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, warning against expecting anything resembling recovery any time soon, or a return to the way things were. “We need to recognize it will be a new normal, a new and different normal for this entire region.”
Local officials reported 10 deaths possibly related to the storm, six of them in Harris County, which includes Houston. But the painstaking and heartbreaking work of clearing streets, going door to door, assessing damage — and finding victims — has not yet begun.
A Houston television station reported Monday that six family members were believed to have drowned when their van was swept away by floodwaters. The KHOU report was attributed to three family members the station did not identify. No bodies have been recovered.
Police Chief Art Acevedo told The Associated Press that he had no information about the report but said that he’s “really worried about how many bodies we’re going to find.”
According to the station, four children and their grandparents were feared dead after the van hit high water Sunday when crossing a bridge in the Greens Bayou area.
The driver of the vehicle, the children’s great-uncle, reportedly escaped before the van sank by grabbing a tree limb. He told the children to try to escape through the back door, but they were unable to get out.
Scenes of people and pets being rescued from the roofs and upper floors of houses revived memories of hurricane Katrina in 2005, when early estimates vastly understated both the material devastation and the death toll — and recovery efforts lasted years.
The administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Brock Long, said Monday that he expected more than 450,000 people to apply for federal assistance.
“We’re going to be here for several years helping you guys recover,” he said. “The state of Texas is about to undergo one of the largest recovery housing missions the nation has ever seen.”
For the time being, efforts are focused on the most basic elements of keeping people alive — plucking stranded survivors from the flood; providing shelter, food and water; and restoring electricity to hundreds of thousands of people who were left without power.
Long said that FEMA was shipping two million litres of water and two million meals to the region. Other government agencies, charities and corporations were also moving supplies into the region.
In Harris County alone, several thousand people stranded in vehicles and buildings by the water were rescued by law enforcement and firefighters using motorboats and helicopters, and legions of volunteers used their own boats to ferry people to safety. Abbott activated the entire Texas National Guard to aid in rescue and recovery, raising the number of troops involved to 12,000 from 3,000. And he praised Texans for rushing to rescue their neighbours.
Officials estimated that more than 30,000 people had taken refuge in emergency shelters, including some that had opened in cities far inland, such as Dallas, more than 200 miles from Houston. The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, said the city had been asked to brace for “numbers that could be up in the tens of thousands.”
In San Antonio, sprawling vacant warehouses had been turned into shelters that could hold more than 4,100 evacuees.
The city of Houston put out a call for doctors, nurses and social workers to go to the George R. Brown Convention Center, where thousands of people took shelter.
At a school gym in San Antonio that had become a shelter for hundreds, people watched television coverage and searched social media feeds in hopes of collecting clues about the homes and neighbours they left behind. They dialed and redialed phone numbers that went straight to voicemail, or just rang, unanswered.
One of them, Michelle McGowen, 34, said she could live with the likelihood that she had lost her home in Aransas Pass, a coastal town near Corpus Christi. But she was desperate to know what had become of her two uncles, both in frail health, who had decided to ride out the storm.
“I’m terrified,” she said. “I have no way of even getting ahold of them.”
Eight oil refineries, with about one- eighth of the U.S.’s refining capacity, shut down because of the storm, which could push gas prices higher. Both of Houston’s airports were closed, and hundreds of passengers were stranded.
Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Friday night as a Category 4, the most powerful storm to strike the U.S. in more than a decade, and though it has been downgraded to a tropical storm, it lingered over the coastal region.
By Monday, it had swamped the Houston region with more than 30 inches of rain in some places, and forecasters warned that the totals in some areas could top 50 inches before the storm moves on some time later this week.
It is expected to move to the northeast, toward Louisiana, and bands of heavy rain were already lashing those regions.