He says it’s possible the driver may have suffered some kind of medical emergency.
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At the Royal Phoenician apartment complex in north Houston, the brown floodwaters submerged cars in the parking lot early Monday, a resident said. “Straying into deep or fast moving flood waters means certain death”, the statement said. One body was found in a submerged vehicle, and a man was found inside a truck that drove into high water on a Houston freeway service road, the Associated Press is reporting.
Harris County Precinct Sgt. Herbert Martinez says crews monitoring the high water on the road saw the man in the 18-wheeler truck drive directly into the water.
“About one half of the state is still under flood warnings”, he said at a news conference. “We will rescue you”.
The declaration came following a briefing with emergency management staff and officials in Houston, where major flooding caused extensive transportation issues and damage Monday morning. Some people were trapped in their homes or attics, fire department spokesman Ruy Lozano said. Other major freeways, plus some feeder roads leading to the highways, were blocked by high water.I was trying to get to work, Marcel Gwinn said as he was stranded for more than 90 minutes on an overpass in west Houston.
Nine hospitals in the region were closed to additional patients because of the flooding, the mayor said.
Hundreds are being evacuated and taken to a staging area at a nearby mall where buses then take them to shelters. The district, with about 215,000 students, made the announcement as the Houston area was under a flash flood watch through Tuesday morning. He called it the most significant flood event since Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, which left 41 people dead. That was down from a peak of 123,000 earlier in the day, the utility said.
The downpour prompted the Houston Police Officers Union to issue a blunt message to residents, but accompanied with a dramatic photo of cars stuck in traffic halfway submerged in water: “Don’t even try it”, HPOU officials wrote on their Twitter post.
Other residents couldn’t safely stay in their flooded homes; at least five shelters have been set up across the city. People who live in those areas should check the forecast and visit DriveTexas.org to see what roads are closed before heading out. The local National Weather Service (NWS) has warned residents not to travel “unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order”.
As of 12:30 p.m. CDT (1545 GMT), more than 800 flights at major airports in Texas were canceled, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.
CenterPoint Energy said almost 110,000 of its customers were without power.
Harris County was one of the hardest hit areas-parts of Houston got more than a foot of rain fall in just six hours Sunday.
The heavy rains forced seven of the city’s many bayous out of their banks and created flooding in parts of the city that had not flooded for many years, Turner said.
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The situation is the result of a almost stationary area of low pressure that has stalled over the western United States, allowing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to flow into Texas over the last few days, according to CNN meteorologist Sean Morris. Heavy rainfall is expected to continue through Tuesday.
