For desperate survivors, ‘the cavalry is coming’

The Texas Gulf Coast braced for days of relentless flooding this week as rescuers struggled to reach desperate residents in a city hammered by the remnants of a fierce hurricane.

Helicopters plucked people from rooftops Sunday across Houston while boats and trucks swept hundreds more to safety as Tropical Storm Harvey fueled historic rains.

The National Weather Service said some areas could be slammed with an “unprecedented” 50 inches of rain by week’s end as the storm lingers.

“This event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced,” the weather service tweeted. “Follow orders from officials to ensure safety.”

Gov. Greg Abbott activated 3,000 National Guard troops in

addition to hundreds of state emergency personnel aiding first responders. He said 600 boats helped rescue the stranded. The Coast Guard said at least 16 helicopters were tapped for air rescues, and more were coming into the area by Monday.

Convoys of buses and a mobile hospital unit were on the way to Houston and the Gulf Coast, as were truckloads of food and volunteers, Abbott said. “They now know the cavalry is coming,” the governor said. “Our top priority is to protect human life.”

Flooding overwhelmed the Houston metropolitan area. Scenes of families shuttled to safety played out in scores of neighborhoods. The Coast Guard said it plucked more than 100 people from rooftops and conducted more than 2,000 multiperson rescues, its three-boat teams searching block by block for stranded residents.

“If you are in a flooding situation, stay calm, do not panic,” the Coast Guard said in a statement. “Do not go into the attic, rescuers from the air cannot see you.”

The storm claimed at least two lives, but it was too soon to know the full extent of the death and destruction as power and cellphone outages made communication difficult.

“The flooding in and around America’s 4th most-populous city is going to write world headlines and set records for generations,” tweeted meteorologist Roger Edwards of the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.

President Trump tweeted support for the agencies battling the disaster and planned to visit the state Tuesday.

Under persistent, pounding rains, some residents in Richmond, 20 miles south of Houston, took refuge in a Red Cross shelter inside a Catholic Church recreation center.

Austin Herrera, 18, said the water on his family’s 10-acre property in nearby Guy, Texas, jumped

1½ feet overnight as water moccasins slithered under the house. He ushered the horses and other animals to higher ground, then drove the six members of his family to a nearby church, where they were then bused to the shelter.

“We’ve seen flooding before,” Herrera said. “But never like this.”

As of Sunday, the Red Cross shelter in Richmond, Texas, had

49 displaced residents. More could be on the way, since Richmond and neighboring Rosenberg sit on the banks of the Brazos River, which experienced catastrophic flooding just last year.

This event could match or surpass that, meteorologists said.

Some residents here were being bused in from another shelter at the Chinese Community Center in Houston, which already had filled to capacity, said Christine Bradley, the shelter manager.

“This is a whole new thing,” she said. “It’s huge.”

Over the next few days, Harvey is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 5 to 15 inches farther south toward the lower Texas coast, farther west toward the Texas Hill Country and farther east through southwest and central Louisiana, the weather service said.

Houston was the focal point of the disaster. The National Weather Service said parts of Harris County had been hit with more than 20 inches of rain in 24 hours. Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the county Flood Control District, called the rainfall totals “staggering.”

This is “worse than the worstcase scenario for Houston,” tweeted WeatherBell meteorologist Ryan Maue.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said emergency officials were overwhelmed with thousands of calls, and he urged residents to not call unless their situation was lifethreatening. He ordered the city’s George R. Brown Convention Center opened as a shelter.

Turner confirmed one death in Houston, saying a woman drowned trying to flee her car in high water. Another death was reported in a house fire in coastal Aransas County.

Turner defended the decision not to call for evacuations before the storm, saying it was too difficult to determine which areas of the sprawling city of 2.3 million people were likely to take the worst hit. The entire city has seen at least some flooding, he said: “You give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare.”

Officials urged people to stay off of the roads.

“It’s so dangerous that people would give themselves the death penalty,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who was out with his officers making water rescues Sunday. “Sad — breaks your heart for our city and our state,” Acevedo said. “But it’s Texas. We’ll get through it.”

The storm made landfall Friday night in Aransas County, southwest of Houston, as a furious Category 4 hurricane with winds exceeding 130 mph.

Meteorologists were awed by the scope of the damage.

Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Postel tweeted, “This could easily be one of the worst flooding disasters in U.S. history.”