The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Houston braces for flooding to worsen
Heavy rains deluge Texas city, forcing high-water rescues.
HOUSTON — High waters flooded neighborhoods around Houston on Saturday following heavy rains that have already resulted in crews rescuing hundreds of people from homes, rooftops and roads engulfed in murky water.
A flood watch remained in effect through this afternoon as forecasters predicted additional rainfall Saturday night, bringing another 1 to 3 inches of water to the soaked region and the likelihood of major flooding.
Friday’s fierce storms forced numerous high-water rescues, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes.
Officials redoubled urgent instructions for residents in low-lying areas to evacuate, warning the worst was still to come.
“This threat is ongoing and it’s going to get worse. It is not your typical river flood,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the nation’s third-largest county.
She described the predicted surge of water as “catastrophic.”
Schools in the path of the flooding canceled classes and roads jammed as authorities closed highways taking on water.
For weeks, drenching rains in Texas and parts of Louisiana have filled reservoirs and saturated the ground.
Floodwaters partially submerged cars and roads across parts of southeastern Texas, north of Houston, where high waters reached the roofs of some homes.
More than 21 inches of rain fell during the five-day period that ended Friday in Liberty County near the city of Splendora, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, according to the National Weather Service.
In the rural community of Shepherd, Gilroy Fernandes said he and his spouse had about an hour to evacuate after a mandatory order. Their home is on stilts near the Trinity River, and they felt relief when the water began to recede on Thursday.
Then the danger grew while they slept.
“Next thing you know, overnight they started releasing more water from the dam at Livingston. And so that caused the level of the river to shoot up by almost 5 or 6 feet overnight,” Fernandes said. Neighbors who left an hour later got stuck in traffic because of flooding.
The Harris County Joint Information Center told KPRC-TV that 196 people and 108 animals have been rescued by emergency response agencies in Harris County.
In neighboring Montgomery County, Judge Mark Keough said there had been more high-water rescues than he was able to count.
“We estimate we’ve had a couple hundred rescues from homes, from houses, from vehicles,” Keough said.
In Polk County, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, officials have staged over 100 water rescues, said county Emergency Management Coordinator Courtney Comstock.
She said homes below Lake Livingston Dam and along the Trinity River have flooded. “It’ll be when things subside before we can do our damage assessment,” Comstock said.
Authorities in Houston have not reported any deaths or injuries.
The city of more than 2 million people is one of the most flood-prone metropolitan areas in the country and has experience dealing with devastating weather.
Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dumped historic rainfall, flooding thousands of homes and resulting in more than 60,000 rescues across Harris County.
Of particular concern was an area along the San Jacinto River in the northeastern part of Harris County, which was expected to continue rising as more rain falls and officials release water from an already full reservoir.
Judge Hidalgo on Thursday issued a mandatory evacuation order for people living along portions of the river.
Most of Houston’s city limits were not heavily impacted by the weather, except for the northeastern neighborhood of Kingwood.
Officials said the area had about four months of rain in about a week’s time.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire said rising flood waters from the San Jacinto River were expected to impact Kingwood late Friday and Saturday.
Shelters have opened across the region, including nine by the American Red Cross.
The weather service reported the river was nearly 74 feet late Saturday morning after reaching nearly 78 feet. The rapidly changing forecast said the river is expected to fall to near the flood stage of 58 feet) by Thursday.
The greater Houston area covers about 10,000 square miles — a footprint slightly bigger than New Jersey.
It is crisscrossed by about 1,700 miles of channels, creeks and bayous that drain into the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles to the southeast from downtown.
The city’s system of bayous and reservoirs was built to drain heavy rains.
But engineering initially designed nearly 100 years ago has struggled to keep up with the city’s growth and bigger storms.