Houston declares flash flood emergency, unprecedented 1.2m rainfall - UPDATES

RT
Sun, 27 Aug 2017 15:48 UTC

© Ernest Scheyder / Reuters

A vehicle sits half submerged in flood waters in residential area of Houston, Texas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

A flash flood emergency has been declared in the Houston area of Texas by the National Weather Service after water reached the second floors of houses south of the city. The heavy rains were brought about by hurricane Harvey, now downgraded to a tropical storm.

Reports of water reaching the second storeys of houses and apartment complexes came not only from southern Houston, but also from Dickinson in nearby Galveston County.

Some rivers in the Houston area were at around eight to ten feet (2.4-3 meters) over their banks, WBTV reported. Over a thousand people have been rescued from the affected area since early Saturday.

"I know for a fact this is the worst flood Houston has ever experienced," Patrick Blood, National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Houston Chronicle. Blood warned that the "catastrophic flooding in the Houston metropolitan area is expected to worsen."

The National Weather Service has warned that rainfall from Hurricane Harvey could reach 50 inches (1.27 meters) in some places, which would be the highest-ever level registered in Texas.

George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston has announced the cancellation of commercial flights due to the flooding.

According to the local power companies, 250,000 of their customers have been left without electricity due to the storm.

During a press-conference on Sunday, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner said emergency services have responded to more than 2,000 calls to 911 in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

There were 250 vehicle rescues carried out in the storm, according to Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena.

Mayor Turner urged people to stay indoors and refrain from driving, as many streets in the city are flooded, AP reported. He ordered the downtown George R. Brown Convention Center to be turned into a shelter for those fleeing the flood.

Turner also defended his decision not to ask people to evacuate before Hurricane Harvey hit the city bringing the heavy rainfall. "If you think the situation right now is bad and you give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare," the mayor explained.

According to unconfirmed data from the National Weather Service, five people have been so far killed by the storm. The CCN reported two fatalities, with a woman drowning after driving her car in high water in Houston and another person dying in a storm-related fire in Rockport.

The actual death toll remains unclear as the rescuers are simply unable to reach all those stranded by the disaster in their homes or cars.

The extent of the damage from Harvey is hard to assess at the moment, but Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, William Brock Long, told NBC's Meet the Press that the length of the recovery process is "going to be years."

Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, hit the Gulf coast of Texas at around 10:00 local time on Saturday with powerful winds and heavy rainfall. It reached Houston early on Sunday, dumping 20 to 30 inches (50 to 70 cm) of rain on the already saturated city.

President Donald Trump announced that he intends to visit the affected Houston area next week.

Comment: More than 1,000 people have been rescued in Houston as of 5pm Sunday (27 August), the city's mayor, Sylvester Turner, announced, as quoted by AP. The official said that nearly 6,000 calls had been received by local police and fire department units, adding that many people were trapped in their attics or on their roofs.

Over 22 aircraft were working to help identify people stranded on roofs, he said. Over 90 dump trucks and 35 boats are also used by the city in rescue operations.

In Dallas, officials have announced they would open an additional "mega shelter" to evacuees on Tuesday morning. The city's convention center will be able to serve 5,000 people fleeing from the hurricane-affected southern part of the state.

Update (Aug. 28)

So far, Harvey has dumped more than 15 trillion gallons of water on Texas, breaking all-time records - with potentially 6 trillion gallons more to come. The resulting floods have been catastrophic.

There may be no parallel available to any other rainstorm in U.S. history, based on the number of people affected, amount of water involved, and other factors, meteorologists have warned.

Due to its wide geographic scope across America's 4th-largest city, the ensuing flood disaster may rank as one of the most, if not the most, expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.

Just check out these before-and-after pics:

The flooding of the bayou reached catastrophic levels last night, reaching 7.28 ft above flood stage. While the flooding continues, NASA satellites show Harvey moving back into the Gulf.

The National Weather Service had to add another color to their rain maps in order to account for the level of rainfall.

Update (Aug. 29)

At 49.3 inches of rain in southeast Houston, Harvey has set a cyclone rainfall record. And for the first time in its history, one of the Houston area's two reservoirs is overflowing.

The reservoirs, which flank Interstate 10 on the west side of Houston, flow into the Buffalo Bayou and are surrounded by parks and residential areas. Water levels in the two reservoirs had already reached record levels Monday evening, measuring 105 feet at Addicks and 99 feet at Barker.

Engineers were unable to measure water levels at the Barker Reservoir on Tuesday because its gauge was flooded overnight, said Jeff Lindner, the Harris County flood control meteorologist.

The overflow did not represent a "failure" of the dam, stressed Richard K. Long, a natural resource management specialist with the Army Corps of Engineers.

"These are not your typical dams; these are unique because of the type of terrain we have," Long said, referring to Houston's relatively flat plain. The Addicks and Barker reservoirs each have a main spillway and two auxiliary spillways. Water hadn't breached either of those spillways, but instead was overflowing through a slightly lower point on the north end of the Addicks Reservoir.

More rain is on the way:

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated his state's entire National Guard, deploying 12,000 servicemen to respond to the hurricane.
• The Harris County Sheriff's Office used motorboats, airboats, and other vehicles to rescue more than 2,000 people in the greater Houston area on Sunday, a spokesman said.
• The National Weather Service has issued flood watches and warnings from near San Antonio to New Orleans, an area home to more than 13 million people.

Estimates are that some 30,000 Houston residents will be left temporarily homeless. Houston airport will probably be closed until Thursday. Experts say there's an additional risk: waterborne illnesses:

"Any time you have water, particularly water that is standing, you can have any number of bacteria or viruses," said Jonathan Yoder, deputy chief of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) waterborne disease prevention branch. "As a general rule, people should anticipate that that water is likely to be, at some level, contaminated."

What it might be contaminated with ranges from unpleasant but relatively harmless gastrointestinal hazards, such as norovirus, to rarer, more serious bacteria - including Vibrio, a potentially deadly micro-organism naturally found along the Gulf Coast.

See also: 'This is a nightmare event': Levee breached south of Houston in 800 year flood event

Update (Aug. 31)

As Harvey's storms move on from Texas to Louisiana, the record flooding has left at least 35 people dead, 17 missing, and 10s of thousands temporarily homeless. 32,000 people are in shelters. Despite weakening to tropical-depression status, the flooding will continue for the rest of the week.

© Tribune News Service 2017

Map of Harvey's path

The Texas National Guard has made 8500+ rescues and 26,000 evacuations so far, and they're seeking an additional 10,000 NG members from other states to supplement their own 14,000.

Then there's this heartening bit of news: despite the aggressive rhetoric and sanctions against them, Venezuela has offered $5 million to Harvey's U.S. victims. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza:

"There will be direct aid from Citgo, a contribution of up to 5 million dollars, to support the affected families affected in Houston and Corpus Christi in collaboration and coordination with their mayors and local authorities, of course. In second place, we are planning on allocating a percentage of sales of our production of Citgo gasoline towards the construction and substitution of housing and shelters."

"We put at their disposal everything the Bolivarian revolution can contribute at the moment of supplies, from brigade members, rescue workers, community doctors who were trained with the spirit of addressing this kind of catastrophe, Petrocasas (mass housing), and everything that the affected area could need right now. We repeat: this is an expression of Venezuela's solidarity, beyond any political difference, that we must express today in the face of the effects of a devastating natural phenomenon."

More recent coverage of Harvey-related news:

• Hurricane Harvey could be one of costliest natural disasters in US history; Moody's forecasts economic costs of up to $75B
• 'They deserve it': Heartless Trump opponents use Harvey as ammo against president & supporters
• Adding toxins to Harvey's misery: Texas air pollution sensors switched off as refineries seep toxic chemicals into air and water
• Hurricane Harvey sweeps away 'cultural revolution', highlights human ability to help one another
• Texas shale drillers hit hard by Hurricane Harvey
• Best Buy claims photo of water selling for $42 per case in Houston was a "big mistake"
• Harvey makes 3rd landfall, striking Louisiana for the first time
• Worries about a Galveston Bio-Lab

One of the most touching and heartbreaking rescue stories in the past couple days was the saving of a 3-year-old girl found clutching her mother's drowned body:

Beaumont police identified the mother as Colette Sulcer, 41, and said her daughter was being treated for hypothermia but doing well. When rescuers found the mother and daughter, the girl was on her mother's back, holding on, said Police Officer Haley Morrow.

"I envision what I would do if that was me in that situation and that's what I would do: I would put my child on my back and try to swim to safety or whatever," Morrow said.

Sulcer's vehicle got stuck Tuesday afternoon in the flooded parking lot of an office park just off Interstate 10, said Capt. Brad Penisson of the fire-rescue department in Beaumont. Squalls from Harvey were pounding Beaumont with up to 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain an hour with 38 mph (60 kph) gusts, according to the National Weather Service.

A witness saw the woman take her daughter and try to walk to safety when the swift current of a flooded drainage canal next to the parking lot swept them both away, Penisson said.

Morrow said the woman's actions probably saved her little girl's life. "When they found her she was still up out of the water," Morrow said.
...
The child was taken to the Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont, and was expected to be released Wednesday. Officer Carol Riley said the girl was doing "very well" and was chatty.

"Everybody at the hospital and the officers just fell in love with her," Riley said.

Update (Sept. 1)

A couple images that capture the devastation brought by Harvey:

© TWITTER/SCREENGRAB

© AFP/Getty Images

© AFP/Getty Images

First Baptist Church of Rockport

The death toll is now 42, and around 100,000 homes have been affected. Meteorologist Jeff Linder estimates that 70% of the 1800-sq-mile county was covered with at least 1.5 feet of water. Groups of volunteers are helping families tear up soaked carpet, knock out damaged drywall, and hauling out furniture and other personal possessions. Some houses were flooded with up to 4 feet of water; other homes flooded to the roof. WSJ tells one story representative of many others:

At the Norchester neighborhood in northwest Houston on Thursday, Beth Smith's driveway was piled with ruined couches and end tables and carpeting soaked by the 4 feet of water that poured into her two-story home, the first time the 40-year-old house has flooded.

As she walked through the area where she has lived all her life, she pointed out homes where neighbors had been rescued. She wrinkled her nose at the musty, chemical smell that grew stronger near the standing water.

"You can smell oil, gasoline, anything you put in your garage," she said.

A former consultant for a scrapbook company, the mother of two wiped away tears as she talked about returning home through knee-deep water to find most of their possessions waterlogged, including her daughters' baby scrapbooks.

"I had to carry them out," she said. "I was crying, taking them out."

Officials have embarked on house-to-house searches for dead and injured. LA Times has some harrowing accounts from residents and rescuers:

One resident who had taken refuge on a roof, Roshanda Harris, said she saw five bodies float away, including those of three children.

Derrick Vance, 29, said he saw half a dozen people die. He descended from the roof at one point to help families next door. But he couldn't reach Williams and others stranded across the complex. The parking lot between them had become a roaring river.
...
Shaky cellphone video posted online(warning: the audio content is disturbing) showed figures clinging to a tree in the parking lot as brown water rushed around them, ripping one woman's clothes off and threatening to tear her away as the other figure clung to her underwear.

"Pull her up! She underwater!" shouted a woman filming from across the complex. "Pull her head up!" yelled a girl. A man can be heard on his phone nearby calling 911. "Tell them she going underwater and she can't breathe," the woman said. "We need someone out here now, we've got people drowning," the man told an operator.

Suddenly, the woman filming screamed. "She's gone - they let her go," she said. Noting others had already drowned, she added, "That's not the first person."

Update (Sept. 2)

With Houston facing up to 2 more weeks until the flooding dies down, that's only one of the dangers. With 156,000 homes flooded, that means mold, electrical hazards, deadly fumes and toxins as the water recedes. Trump has proposed $7.85 billion in federal disaster relief, and plans to visit Houston again, and Louisiana, on Saturday.

Some parts of Texas are actually expecting MORE flooding from overflowing rivers, including Lake Jackson, an hour south of Houston, where overflowing reservoirs may flood another 15 to 20 thousand homes.

One man came home to find a 9-foot alligator in his living room: