Tag Archives: Houston

Houston crippled by catastrophic flooding with more rain on the way

Flooded downtown is seen from a high rise along Buffalo Bayou after Hurricane Harvey inundated the Texas Gulf coast with rain causing widespread flooding, in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 27, 2017 in this picture obtained from social media.

By Gary McWilliams and Ruthy Munoz

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Houston is facing worsening historic flooding in the coming days as Tropical Storm Harvey dumps more rain on the city, swelling rivers to record levels and forcing federal engineers on Monday to release water from area reservoirs in hopes of controlling the rushing currents.

Harvey, the most powerful hurricane to strike Texas in more than 50 years, first hit land late on Friday and has killed at least two people. It has since lingered around Texas’ Gulf Coast, where it is forecast to remain for several more days, drenching parts of the region with a year’s worth of rain in the span of a week.

Schools, airports and office buildings in the nation’s fourth largest city were ordered shut on Monday as scores of roads turned into rivers and chest-high water filled neighborhoods in the low-lying city that is home to about 2.3 million people. The area’s vital petrochemcial industry also was crippled.

Torrential rain also hit areas more than 150 miles (240 km) away, swelling rivers upstream and causing a surge that was heading toward the Houston area, where numerous rivers and streams already have been breached.

More flooding is expected as water levels continue to rise, putting more residents at risk. More than 30,000 people are expected to be placed temporarily in shelters, FEMA Administrator Brock Long said at a news conference on Monday. The National Weather Service said the worst of floods are expected Wednesday and Thursday, although there is still uncertainty over the storm’s path.

 

RESERVOIR RELEASES

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that it was releasing water from two nearby reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou, the primary body of water running through Houston.

“If we don’t begin releasing now, the volume of uncontrolled water around the dams will be higher and have a greater impact on the surrounding communities,” said Colonel Lars Zetterstrom, Galveston district commander of the Corps.

The Harris County Flood Control District said it expected the release to start flooding homes around the Addicks and Barker reservoirs on Monday morning.

Authorities ordered more than 50,000 people to leave parts of Fort Bend County, about 35 miles (55 km) southwest of Houston, as the Brazos River was set to crest at a record high of 59 feet (18 m) this week, 14 feet above its flood stage.

Brazos County Judge Robert Hebert told reporters the forecast crest represented a high not seen in at least 800 years.

“What we’re seeing is the most devastating flood event in Houston’s recorded history,” said Steve Bowen, chief meteorologist at reinsurance company Aon Benfield.

Harvey is expected to produce an additional 15 to 25 inches (38 to 63 cm) of rain through Friday in the upper Texas coast and into southwestern Louisiana, the National Hurricane Center said.

By the end of the week in some Texas coastal areas the total precipitation could reach 50 inches (127 cm), which is the average rainfall for an entire year, forecasters said. Nearly 24 inches fell in 24 hours in Baytown, a city with major refineries about 30 miles east of Houston, the weather service said early on Monday.

Dallas, 240 miles (386 km) north of Houston, will set up a “mega shelter” at its convention center to house 5,000 evacuees, the city said in a statement.

 

TRUMP VISIT

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to go to Texas on Tuesday to survey the storm damage, a White House spokeswoman said on Sunday. On Monday he approved an emergency declaration for Louisiana.

Trump, facing the first big U.S. natural disaster since he took office in January, had signed a disaster proclamation for Texas on Friday, triggering federal relief efforts. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday he planned to add 1,000 more National Guard personnel to the flood battle.

Almost half of the U.S. refining capacity is in the Gulf region. Shutdowns extended across the coast, including Exxon Mobil’s Baytown refinery. More than 2.3 million barrels of capacity were offline as of Monday morning, representing 13 percent of daily U.S. production.

Gasoline futures rose more than 4 percent to two-year highs on Monday morning. The outages will limit the availability of U.S. gasoline and other refined products for global consumers and push prices higher, analysts said.

The center of Harvey was 90 miles (148 km) southwest of Houston on Monday morning and forecast to arc slowly toward the city through Wednesday.

Thousands of people were rescued on Sunday by Harris County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Coast Guard and Houston police as residents brought boats to staging centers and helicopters were deployed to save others stranded.

Federal authorities predicted it would take years to repair the damage from Harvey. The expected rain conjured memories of Tropical Storm Allison, which lingered for days over South Texas in 2001, flooding 70,000 homes and causing $9 billion in damage.

Damages are not likely to be as extensive as Katrina in 2005, which killed 1,800 people in and around New Orleans, or Sandy, which hit New York in 2012, said a spokeswoman for Hannover Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurers. Those caused $80 billion and $36 billion in insured losses, respectively.

All Houston port facilities will be closed on Monday because of the weather threat, a port spokeswoman said.

More than 247,000 customers in the Houston area were without power on Monday morning, utilities CenterPoint Energy, AEP Texas and TNMP said. CenterPoint warned, though, it could not update its figures due to limited access caused by flooding.

Jose Rengel, 47, a construction worker who lives in Galveston, helped rescue efforts in Dickinson, southeast of Houston, where he saw water cresting the tops of cars.

“I am blessed that not much has happened to me but these people lost everything,” he said.

“And it keeps raining. The water has nowhere to go.”

 

(Additional reporting by Brian Thevenot in Rockport, Kevin Drawbaugh, Valerie Volcovici and Jeff Mason in Washington, DC, Chris Michaud and Dion Rabouin in New York, Erwin Seba, Marianna Parraga, Nick Oxford and Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Writing by Jon Herskovitz and David Gaffen; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Bill Trott)

 

9 dead, in Houston Flood; more rain coming

Flood waters cover the area of FM 1463 at IH-10 in Fort Bend County

HOUSTON (Reuters) – At least nine people have died and some 1,150 homes have been damaged in flooding triggered by torrential downpours in the Houston area this week, officials said on Wednesday, as forecasts called for more rain.

Eight of those killed were found in vehicles that had been in flooded areas, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences and a local sheriff said, adding that medical examiners were working to confirm the causes of death.

The National Weather Service said more rain is on tap for the city, the country’s fourth largest, after a record-setting drenching that dumped as much as 18 inches (45 cm) on some parts of the Houston area on Monday.

The weather service has issued a flood watch from central Texas through Houston and into large parts of Louisiana.

There have been more than 1,200 water rescues during the recent flooding, with emergency crews shuttling people by boat to dry ground and picking up motorists whose cars were caught in rushing waters.

The Houston Independent School District, the country’s seventh-largest school district, said it would reopen on Wednesday after the flooding caused hundreds of schools to close earlier this week.

Heavy storms can overwhelm the drainage channels that move water from Houston back to the Gulf of Mexico, particularly if the ground is already saturated.

The city faced similar widespread flooding during a storm last May and Tropical Storm Allison’s torrent in 2001.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, the Houston bureau and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Paul Simao)

More storms for hard hit Houston, 5 dead

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Scores of schools were closed and cleanup was underway in Houston on Tuesday, a day after record rains hits the fourth most populous U.S. city, causing floods that left five dead and led to more than 1,000 water rescues.

The National Weather Service has put a flash flood watch in effect for large parts of the Houston area and into southwestern Louisiana on Tuesday. As much as 18 inches (45 cm) fell in some areas of Harris County, which contains Houston, and the weather service said heaviest daily rain records were set on Monday at the two main airports in the city.

More storms have been forecast for already saturated parts of Texas on Tuesday. About 9,000 customers were without power in the Houston area on Tuesday morning, a sharp decrease from more than 100,000 a day earlier, CenterPoint Energy said.

Flood waters that blocked roads to downtown and other main areas of the city have largely receded, with officials saying most people should be able to make it back to work.

“The city is back to normal operations but be careful driving in. Now we plan to help people recover from the flooding waters,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a tweet.

As of 8 a.m. CDT (1300 GMT), there were more than 100 flight cancellations on Tuesday at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. More than 1,000 flights were canceled at major Texas airports on Monday due to the storms.

Rains in other parts of the state were expected to cause rivers to crest later in the week, bringing floods to downstream areas, the weather service said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Erwin Seba Editing by W Simon)

Schools in South Florida, Houston and Dallas Also Received Threats

Multiple major school districts across the United States are reporting that they received threats similar to the ones that were made against schools Los Angeles and New York earlier this week.

Schools in Miami, Houston and Dallas all reported receiving the threats on Wednesday evening. The threats weren’t determined to be credible and schools in those cities stayed open Thursday.

School officials in Los Angeles canceled all classes on Tuesday after receiving a threat that involved backpacks and other packages. The threat was ultimately determined to be a hoax.

New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters at a Tuesday news conference that their schools got a similar threat, but determined it wasn’t serious. Classes went on as planned.

Speaking at a news conference Thursday, Miami-Dade County Public School Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said that someone emailed board members in multiple school districts on Wednesday night with the exact same message. After speaking with various law enforcement agencies, the threat wasn’t deemed credible and Thursday went on as “a regular school day.”

Still, the district increased its law enforcement presence in schools.

Carvalho said at the news conference that schools in Broward County, Florida, and Long Beach, California, received similar threats. The Houston Independent School District and Dallas Independent School District also got similar threats, officials there said in statements. The Orange County (Florida) Public Schools were also threatened, according to their Facebook page.

“At this time, we do not believe the threat is credible, but as a precautionary measure law enforcement officers are in the process of conducting random sweeps of school district buildings to ensure student safety,” the Houston Independent School District said in a statement.

The Dallas Independent School District said bomb-sniffing dogs were used in their sweeps.

The threats are being made against some of the largest school districts in the country.

According to American School & University Magazine, New York and Los Angeles are America’s largest and second-largest school districts in terms of enrollment, respectively. Miami-Dade ranked fourth, Broward County was sixth, Houston was seventh, Orange County was 10th and Dallas was 14th. Together, those seven districts educate close to 3 million students every day.

Houston Sermon Subpoenas Feared To Be Republican Fundraising Tools

The recent incidents in Houston where the government tried to seize the sermons of pastors critical of city government actions is now coming under fire from those on the left-wing who fear a backlash that could harm them at the ballot box.

The anti-Christian organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has posted a piece posted by member Rob Boston which says that incident will harm those who are trying to keep Christians from having their views in the public arena.

“The officials have handed the Religious Right an incredible public relations victory,” wrote Boston, adding that “this incident has become fodder for the Religious Right’s ‘we’re being persecuted’ campaign. At the end of the day, that’s what’s so unfortunate about the city’s misstep: These subpoenas will launch a thousand right-wing fund-raising letters.”

The demands came after many Christian groups protested and spoke out about a law that would force public locations within the city to allow various actions considered possibly dangerous, including allowing men to use women’s bathrooms.

The subpoenas have drawn condemnation from even major anti-Christian organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

The city is angered that over 50,000 signatures were collected on a petition over overturn their law, which city attorney David Feldman dismissed as being mostly invalid.  The issue will go before a court in January.