HOUSTON — More than 5,500 weary refugees of Tropical Storm Harvey's fury sought refuge in the city's cavernous convention center and other shelters Monday as local, state and federal officials warned that the human crisis in southeast Texas was just beginning.
Mayor Sylvester Turner said he expects the number of people seeking shelter to rise "exponentially" by day's end. FEMA Administrator Brock Long said more than 30,000 people ultimately could need shelter as the storm continues to pound the region with unrelenting rains and flooding.
"The sheltering mission is going to be a very heavy lift," Long said in a news conference in Washington before flying to Texas. About 50 Texas counties and parts of Louisiana will face serious repercussions from the "landmark event," he said.
"We need citizens to be involved," Long said. "You could not draw this forecast up, you could not dream this forecast up."
City Police Chief Art Acevedo said officers had rescued more than 2,000 people trapped by the overwhelming waters, with another 185 rescue requests still pending. The city has grappled with 75,000 911 calls, and the system has backed up but never went down, authorities said.
It's still raining in Texas, and is expected to do so for days. Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service, said some areas of southeast Texas around Houston have already seen more than 30 inches of rain. A wide swath of the region has been hit with 15-20 inches of rain, he said.
"We are seeing catastrophic flooding, and this area is likely to expand," Uccellini said.
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Harvey, now spinning near Port O'Connor, Texas, was forecast to move back into the Gulf of Mexico today, the National Hurricane Center said. It will meander over the Gulf for a couple of days before making a second landfall somewhere near the Texas/Louisiana border, likely on Wednesday.
Harvey is then expected to slowly move northeast across Louisiana and Arkansas as a tropical depression from Thursday into Saturday.
As it spins offshore, the storm is expected to dump an additional 15 to 25 inches of rain through Friday over the upper Texas coast and into southwestern Louisiana, exacerbating the life-threatening, catastrophic flooding in the Houston area, the hurricane center said.
Isolated storm totals may reach 50 inches over the upper Texas coast, including parts of the Houston/Galveston metropolitan area.
"Reliable weather forecasts still show taking whatever rain has already fallen around Houston and doubling it over the next 4-5 days," said WeatherBell meteorologist Ryan Maue.
President Trump, who was scheduled to visit Texas on Tuesday, issued a federal disaster declaration Monday for many parishes in southwestern Louisiana. Gov. John Bel Edwards sought the declaration, saying he expects "significant damage" in his state.
In flood-gorged Houston, residents continued rescuing neighbors throughout the night and braced for days of heavy rains. The George R. Brown Convention Center was being outfitted to handle 5,000 evacuees, city officials said. More than a dozen smaller shelters have been opened across Harris County.
Desiree Mallard, who carried her toddler son to the center, said she heard on the news that residents were advised not to leave the city, and so she didn’t. She said she finally fled her apartment by floating her son on an air mattress through floodwaters.
“I could have (left), if I would have known it was going to be this bad, but I didn’t know,” Mallard said. “And then when it got bad, they said, ‘It’s too late to evacuate.’”
From Katy to Dickinson to downtown Houston, the waters continued rising to new heights and plunged the greater Houston area and its nearly 6 million residents into uncharted chaos.
In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers early Monday began releasing water from the overfilled Addicks and Barker reservoirs in west Houston. The release was necessary, officials said, to avoid a collapse of the reservoirs’ dam and inundate downtown Houston. But it put several thousand homes in the area at further flood risk.
“The idea is to prepare ... pack up what you need and put it in your vehicle and when the sun comes up, get out,” Jeff Lindner, of the Harris County Flood Control District, said Sunday. “And you don’t have to go far, you just need to get out of this area.”
Anyone with a boat who can volunteer to help please call 713-881-3100 #HurricaneHarvey
— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) August 27, 2017
Throughout Houston, drivers abandoned cars overtaken by flood-swollen streets, and emergency alerts on radios and cellphones continuously warned of possible tornado activity all as rain continuing pelting the city in steady sheets.
Besides steadily rising water, residents in the greater Houston area on Sunday contended with the potential of tornadoes ripping homes apart.
The deluge from Harvey was so intense that authorities were urging residents to seek refuge on roofs as emergency crews struggled to make their way through the city by land, water and air amid desperate pleas for help.
Interstate 610, a freeway forming a 38-mile long loop around downtown Houston, was engulfed in floodwaters that were creeping closer to overhead highway signs — another sign of how dire the situation was.
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Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said authorities had received more than 2,000 calls for help and would be opening the city’s main convention center as a shelter.
"I don’t need to tell anyone this is a very, very serious and unprecedented storm,” Turner said at a news conference. “We have several hundred structural flooding reports. We expect that number to rise pretty dramatically.”
Residents were being told to stay on roofs instead of climbing into attics — and to wave towels or sheets to flag down rescuers.
Harris County sheriff’s spokesman Jason Spencer said flooding throughout the county that includes Houston was so widespread that it’s “difficult to pinpoint the worst area.”
Spencer said the department has high-water vehicles and airboats but “certainly not enough.” He says authorities are prioritizing hundreds of phones calls for help to ensure life-and-death situations were at the top of the list.
The situation was “heartbreaking,” he said.
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