Riverside native helping with storm response ,

Information officer says Houston seeing beginning of ordeal.

Bill Begley hasn’t been able go home lately.

The 1979 Stebbins High School graduate lives “less than a mile” from the heart of downtown Houston, where he is working at the city’s Joint Operation Center, helping to respond to the devastation left by Hurricane Harvey.

Begley is among the tens of thousands — a number rising by the hour — staying at alternative sites in the aftermath of the historic and deadly storm hitting Texas and swamping the nation’s fourth-largest city.

“There’s no way for me to get to home,” said Begley, a public information officer for the city of Houston’s airport system.

“The streets to get back to where (I live) — which is close to here — are under water,” the Riverside native said Monday afternoon. “And it’s not safe to drive.

“That’s the No. 1 thing we’ve been emphasizing to everybody in Houston is, the best thing you can find is a place that’s high and dry and hunker down and wait. Because getting out in this is not a safe proposition.”

The hurricane hit land Friday and since has been downgraded to a tropical storm. But the estimated two feet of rain that followed helped bring devastating floods to Houston.

Thousands sought refuge on rooftops or higher ground as overwhelmed rescuers could not keep up with the constant calls for help.

Begley is among “an army” of public information officers who are briefing local and regional officials on rescue operations and responding “to the people here in the Houston region that are affected by this storm.”

Those numbers continue to grow because the scope of the storm’s impact, he said, is “massive.”

The Houston metropolitan area, he said, has a population of about 6.5 million. That’s more people than in the combined metro areas of Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton.

“And then you expand that out into the neighboring counties,” Begley said. “And in some way, shape or form — either through wind, rain, flooding — everybody in that area has been affected. We are seeing streets in the city of Houston that are impassible.”

Unlike many, Begley is fortunate. He said Monday his home and family are safe.

Meanwhile, officials at the joint operations center have been dealing with “local, state and federal officials on an hourly basis just to respond to the needs of the people,” he said.

On Friday, Begley said his shift started at about 5:45 p.m. It was about 27 hours before he got any sleep.

In the first two days since the storm hit, he said, more than 2,000 calls for high-water rescue efforts were received, “and we continue to see rain,” Begley said.

“Plus, there’s a dam near here that we are slowly having to relieve some of the buildup. That will probably cause even more flooding,” he added.

“So it’s ongoing. We are in the response-and-rescue phase,” Begley said.

“It’s just the beginning. Getting through this is just the beginning.”