Two-day rainfall totals have reached or exceeded 20 inches across the metro area, and new bands of torrential rain appear on track to drop more than three inches per hour on the city late Sunday into Monday.
- In a scene that evoked Hurricane Katrina, residents had to be rescued by helicopters and boats as streets turned into raging rivers and made evacuation all but impossible.
- Tropical Storm Harvey is “beyond anything experienced,” the National Weather Service said. The Service issued a forecast saying Houston could get as much as 50 inches, which would be the highest amount ever recorded in Texas
At least five deaths and more than a dozen injuries have been reported in the aftermath of Harvey, the hurricane that tore across the Gulf Coast of Texas over the weekend.
• On Sunday the powerful system, now a tropical storm, pounded the region with torrential rains that were expected to continue for days, causing catastrophic floods, according to the National Hurricane Center.
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| Gloria Maria Quintanilla walked to work in Houston’s Galleria area. Julie Turkewitz/The New York Times |
Thousands of rescue missions have been launched in Houston and across much of Central Texas, where downpours are expected to continue throughout the week and flooding could become much more severe. More than 3,000 national and state guard troops were deployed to assist in relief efforts, with another 1,000 heading to Houston on Monday.
At least five people have been reported dead as a result of the storm, according to the National Weather Service. Local officials expect that number to rise as floodwaters recede.
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| George Huntoon helped Monica Aizpurua and her daughter Tristan Aizpurua, 18, to a boat in the Meyerland area of Houston. Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times |
Just two months on the job, William “Brock” Long is coordinating the federal response to the storm, which now includes 5,000 employees in Texas. But on Sunday, with first responders overwhelmed by the volume of people in distress, many Texans launched their own rescues.
In Houston on Sunday morning, Mayor Sylvester Turner declared that “most major thoroughfares and their feeder roads” were now “impassible."
Why wasn't Houston evacuated? Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said 'you can't put 6.5million people on the road.'
Houston area officials ...may have been remembering that the city government was strongly criticized after the disastrous evacuation before Hurricane Rita in 2005.
In the hours before Rita struck the Houston area in September 2005, government officials issued an evacuation order, and some 2.5 million people hit the road at the same time, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Officials later reported more than 100 deaths connected to Hurricane Rita — and at least 60 of those deaths were linked the evacuation itself, according to a 2006 report to the Texas House of Representatives.
Dozens were injured or died of heat stroke waiting in traffic for nearly a full day. Fights broke out on clogged highways. A charter bus carrying people from a nursing home exploded on the side of Interstate 45, killing 24 people inside.
Meanwhile, the fear from Hurricane Rita turned out to be unfounded. It weakened from a Category 5 churning in the Gulf of Mexico to a Category 3 by the time it made landfall in East Texas — and resulted in a fraction of the damage and deaths as Hurricane Katrina, which had ravaged New Orleans three weeks earlier.
- In the long term, Texas is likely to face a massive, multibillion-dollar rebuilding effort that may affect a generation — and what is sure to be a daunting and sometimes depressing era of government trailers, red tape and fights with bureaucrats and insurance companies.
As hard rains continued to fall, cars lay wrecked or stalled out on Houston’s interstate highways. People walked the roadways, looking for shelter or help, some vainly holding umbrellas skyward. Others waded through waist-high water, or paddled pirogues and little inflatable rafts. Rescue crews traversed the city in high-water vehicles, their crews in life jackets and helmets, and in trucks towing boats and Jet Skis.
