HOUSTON
(Reuters) - Floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey are likely to rise as more
torrential rain pounds the U.S. Gulf Coast, where at least eight people have
already been killed in Texas and tens of thousands driven from their homes,
officials said on Monday.
Thousands of
National Guard troops, police officers, rescue workers and civilians raced in
helicopters, boats and special high-water trucks to rescue the hundreds
stranded in the catastrophic storm that has crippled Houston, the nation’s
fourth-largest city.
Harvey has
already dumped more rain in the past few days than some affected areas normally
see in a year.
The storm
was the most powerful hurricane to strike Texas in more than 50 years when it
hit land on Friday near Corpus Christi, 220 miles (354 km) southwest of
Houston.
The worst is
far from over because the slow-moving storm will continue to dump rain over the
next few days in an area hit by “unprecedented” flooding, the National Weather
Service said.
“Additional
heavy rainfall overnight is expected to worsen the flood situation in
southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana,” the National Hurricane Center
said.
Forecasts
show that some spots in and around Houston could see an additional 12 inches
(30 cm) of rain on Tuesday, bringing the total rainfall from Harvey to about 50
inches (127 cm) in parts of the city’s metro area.
U.S.
President Donald Trump plans to go to Texas on Tuesday to survey the damage and
may also visit Louisiana, where the storm is now dumping rain.
Trump,
facing the biggest U.S. natural disaster since he took office in January, has
signed disaster proclamations for Texas and Louisiana, triggering federal
relief efforts.
Among the
most recent fatalities from the storm was a family that included two adults and
four children who were believed to have drowned after the van they were in was
swept away by floodwaters in Houston, authorities said on Monday.
In scenes
evoking the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, police and Coast Guard
teams have each rescued more than 3,000 people, plucking many from rooftops by
helicopter, as they urged the hundreds more believed to be marooned in flooded
houses to hang towels or sheets outside to alert rescuers.
Regina
Costilla, 48, said she and her 16-year-old son had been rescued from their home
by a good Samaritan with a boat. She worried until she was reunited with her
husband and dog, who had been left behind because they did not fit into the
boat.
“I’m not
complaining, we’re alive,” she said.
Schools and
office buildings were closed throughout the metropolitan area, home to 6.8
million people, as chest-high water filled some neighborhoods in the low-lying
city.
The Federal
Emergency Management Agency director Brock Long estimated that 30,000 people
would eventually be housed temporarily in shelters.
A DIFFERENT
NORMAL"
Both of
Houston’s major airports were shut, along with most major highways, rail lines
and a hospital, where patients were evacuated over the weekend. More than a
quarter of a million customers in the region were without power by Monday
evening, utilities said.
The Brazos
River was forecast to crest at a record high in the next two days about 30
miles (50 kms) southwest of Houston, forcing the mandatory evacuation of about
50,000 people in Fort Bend County, where officials described the predicted
deluge as the worst in at least eight centuries.
Rising river
and reservoir levels also forced evacuations in the counties of Brazoria and
Galveston, near Houston.
As stunned
families surveyed destroyed homes and roads flooded or clogged with debris,
Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned Houstonians to brace for a long recovery.
“We need to
recognize this is going to be a new and different normal for this entire
region,” Abbott said.
Harvey’s
center was in the Gulf of Mexico about 105 miles (170 km) south of Houston and
forecast to arc slowly toward the city through Wednesday, adding more rain to
areas already inundated.
The storm
was expected to linger over Texas’ Gulf Coast for the next few days, dropping
another 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 cm) of rain, with threats of flooding
extending into Louisiana.
The U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers said on Monday it was releasing water from the nearby
Addicks and Barker reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou, Houston’s primary body of
water, to prevent dangerous buildups.
In Rockport,
National Guard troops distributed water to residents as utility crews worked to
restore power, amid reports of sporadic looting.
Resident
Savannah White, 20, welcomed the president's visit because she said Houston
needed help.
"I'm
glad to see him coming down here because it's in such bad condition,"
White said. "Pretty much destroyed, there's nothing left standing."
Houston did
not order an evacuation due to concerns about putting its 2.3 million residents
on the street, causing chaos on the roads that could be more deadly than the
storm, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
Gasoline futures
hit their highest in two years as Harvey knocked out about 13 percent of total
U.S. refining capacity, based on company reports and Reuters estimates.
The United
States' second-largest refinery, in Baytown, was shut down, and the largest
refinery, in Port Arthur, was expected to make a final decision on shutdown on
Tuesday.
The floods
could destroy as much as $20 billion in insured property, making the storm one
of the costliest in history for U.S. insurers, Wall Street analysts say.
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