The administration and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner are focussing their efforts on allaying the fears of the people while facilitating safe evacuation and shuttles between shelters and people’s homes so they can retrieve some belongings that survived the waters.
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“No matter what drainage system you build, anything will struggle with that kind of volume in that short a time”, he said. “Gators, snakes. We’ve seen it all… over the last couple days”.
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. Gary Norman, executive staff analyst with the Houston Public Works and Engineering Department, said in an email that “we are constantly evaluating how best to protect and inform the public”.
The Houston area received more than a foot of rain this week, leading to flooding that inundated structures and forced thousands of people to evacuate.
“There’s a lot of memories that are lost in that house”, Thomas said. “There’s nothing I can say that’s going to ease your frustration”. Unless you are escaping flood waters, the safest place is inside your home.
Harris County Precinct 5 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.
Once the flooding has ended and residents are back on their feet, Ellis said, “We got to have a serious conversation about what can be done” about how much “impervious cover” people can bring into the city “without having enough retention and retention ponds”.
Another north Houston resident posted video of residents leaving their flooded homes in a canoe as the rain continued to fall. The extra rain in the coming days could create 500-year level floods.
Samuel Brody, director of the Environmental Planning & Sustainability Research Unit at Texas A&M University, past year called Houston “the No. 1 city in America to be injured and die in a flood”. “This is not even a year later”.
Harris County said first responders there have rescued 1,821 across the area, warning it expected more deaths and flooding victims. Trucks at a fix shop in Texas Highway 114 are flooded as Lake Bridgeport continues to rise with runoff from recent rains, in Bridgeport, Texas, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. Six of the driver deaths occurred in the city or suburbs of Houston, while two happened in surrounding counties.
With rain wreaking havoc in the Texas city – the fourth most populous in the country – Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster in nine counties.
Given Houston’s flat topography, the floodwaters won’t disappear anytime soon, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.
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Monday’s flooding made for some dramatic rescues, including a man who was seconds away from being submerged.
