TRUMP VOWS TO DO: A HECKUVA JOB
Promises ‘better than ever’ recovery Cop drowns, thousands still trapped
President Trump waves a Texas flag in Corpus Christi while donning a USA hat before pledging to get the state “back and operating immediately.”
AN UPBEAT President Trump flew in Tuesday to storm-ravaged Texas, mixing encouragement with non sequiturs as lethal Tropical Storm Harvey raged for a fifth day.
Air Force One touched down as the semisubmerged Lone Star State endured a round of new woes: Two dams and a levee breached, a drowned police officer’s body found and thousands more left homeless.
“Harvey . . . such an innocent name, Ben, right?” Trump cracked to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson during a visit to the emergency operations center in the state capital of Austin. “But it’s not.”
Speaking of the recovery effort, he said, “We want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at in five years or 10 years from now as this is the way to do it.”
Trump first stopped in Corpus Christi, where he visited a firehouse and offered words of reassurance to local residents.
He stood atop the front bumper of a fire truck, holding a Texas state flag and lapsing briefly into campaign-speak while addressing the citizens gathered outside.
“What a crowd. What a turnout,” Trump said to cheers, thanking Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. “This is historic. It’s epic what happened, but you know what, it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”
“We are going to get you back and operating immediately.”
The promise was belied by Federal Emergency Management Agency head Brock Long and Trump himself, who acknowledged Texas faces a massively expensive and unprecedented rebuilding effort in the future. Estimates for the damage are in the tens of billions of dollars.
Trump plans to return to the Texas coast Saturday to meet evacuees and see parts of the state that were “hit really hard,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One. Additional stops in neighboring Louisiana are scheduled, depending on the weather.
“Nobody’s ever seen this much water,” Trump declared at the Austin meeting with local politicians and members of his cabinet. “The water has never been seen like this, to this extent. Maybe sometime it’s going to disappear. We keep waiting.”
He was right: The 51.88 inches of rain recorded in Cedar Bayou set a new continental U.S. record for a single storm.
Trump, in his twin appearances, failed to mention those killed in the storm — including the Houston police sergeant — or the thousands left homeless by the endless flooding.
The city of Houston moved Tuesday to open at least two more mega-shelters to cover the thousands of people forced from their homes by the former hurricane. There were already more than 9,000 people wedged inside the George R. Brown Convention Center, where officials planned to house half that number.
The Toyota Center, home to the NBA’s Houston Rockets, was expected to take in the dispossessed lining up outside its doors.
Televangelist Joel Osteen, the target of relentless social media abuse, finally agreed Tuesday to open up his 16,000-seat megachurch to the less fortunate.
More than 17,000 displaced people found refuge in shelters, including Cheryl Whitely. She fled her Houston area home with her kids, her mom and six pets, escaping to a Red Cross shelter.
“I’m still soaking wet and freezing cold, and they are short on blankets,” Whitely said.
But there was a respite ahead in Texas after five ferocious days of rain. Harvey was expected to move inland into Louisiana, where New Orleans could fall in its wet path.
“Texas is going to get a chance to finally dry out as this system pulls out,” said National Hurricane Center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.
Cruz and Cornyn, both thanked by Trump, were part of a large Texas congressional contingent that voted against aid for New York and New Jersey in 2013 after Hurricane Sandy.
Trump wore a white “USA” baseball cap available for $40 on his personal website. His name appears on the back of the cap, with an American flag on its side.
Inside with Gov. Greg Abbott, Trump stopped just short of patting himself on the back for his handling of Harvey so far.
“We won’t say congratulations,” Trump told Abbott after flying into the rain-soaked state for a firsthand look at the massive mess left by the storm. “We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to congratulate. We’ll
congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”
The hopeful talk seemed premature on a day when the Houston police mourned the loss of Sgt. Steve Perez, 60, who died while on his way to work on Sunday.
He was last seen alive at 4 a.m., and his body was discovered Tuesday morning, said a teary Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.
About 75 miles to the east, in Beaumont, a mother drowned while trying escape gushing water with her young daughter. Police grabbed the little girl and her mother before they vanished under a trestle.
The mother later died — raising the number of victims to at least two dozen, according to accounts from relatives and authorities.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences updated its storm-related deaths Tuesday night to include an 89-year-old woman, Agnes Stanley, who was found in 4 feet of water in a home.
A 76-year-old woman was discovered in floodwater near a car. Her name was not released.
A day earlier, a 45-year-old man, Travis Lynn Callihan, left his vehicle and fell into rising waters. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The flooding issues in Houston and the surrounding suburbs were exacerbated by the failures of one levee and a pair of aging dams.
Brazoria County authorities tweeted a frantic message Tuesday when the rising water proved too much for a local levee to handle, threatening residents in low-lying areas about 50 miles outside Houston.
“The levee at Columbia Lakes has been breached!!” the tweet read. “GET OUT NOW!!”
The 70-year-old dams at the Addicks and Barker reservoirs began overflowing despite the Monday release of water by engineers in a controlled effort to relieve pressure at the two sites.
The failures mean additional flooding of streets and homes, with the water now likely to linger for up to a month, said Jeff Lindner of the Harris County Flood Control District.
“This is something we’ve never seen before,” he added — an oft-repeated refrain in the region in recent days.
The continued bad news came as local officials feared the worst part of the deadly storm could lie ahead. Local first responders speculated that the death toll could increase dramatically once the floodwaters finally recede.
Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena estimated Tuesday that there were still around 1,000 residences with people trapped inside.
Record-setting Cedar Bayou had plenty of company in the torrent tally.
Another 14 spots, including four in Houston, already recorded more than 40 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. And another 20 locations in the city reported more than 36 inches of precipitation.
About 25 miles northeast of Houston, the possibility of an explosion at a heavily flooded chemical plant led to the evacuation of thousands, officials said Tuesday. All residents within 11/2 miles of the Crosby plant, owned by Arkema SA, were relocated as a “precautionary measure,” officials said.
Federal and local agencies say they have rescued more than 13,000 people in Houston and the surrounding cities and counties.
Water rescues and evacuations continued Tuesday as forecasters warned the storm was likely to make landfall again Wednesday, with Harvey finally moving northeast into Louisiana.
Texas residents were both impressed and depressed by Trump’s bravado during the presidential visit.
Stay-at-home mom Gloria Stilwell said Trump was right: “Texas can definitely handle it. Texans have always banded together.” Nurse Lisa Ike was more skeptical. “Texas can handle anything? I just lost my house and three cars,” she said. “I need help.”