Southeast Texas expects more rain after days of flooding
Swollen rivers continued rising in southeast Texas on Saturday after a night of evacuations and rescues from floodwaters that swamped roads, stranded cars and inundated homes in the region.
Emergency responders in airboats searched flooded streets and subdivisions around Houston, rescuing 178 people and 122 pets from stranded cars and rooftops by Saturday afternoon, according to Judge Lina Hidalgo, Harris County’s top executive.
Officials underscored the urgency of evacuation orders for residents in low-lying areas, warning that the worst was still to come.
“This threat is ongoing and it’s going to get worse,” Hidalgo said. “It is not your typical river flood.”
A sparsely populated section of northeastern Harris County along the east fork of the San Jacinto River had crested Saturday at 77.8 feet above sea level, or more than 27 feet above normal, Hidalgo said. On Thursday, she had issued evacuation orders for about 5,000 people living in that part of the county.
Along the west fork, where a voluntary evacuation was underway, the river had not yet crested, Hidalgo said at a news conference Saturday.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” she said, adding that “a certain level of uncertainty remains.”
American Red Cross shelters across six Texas counties were housing 122 people, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Saturday.
North and east of Houston, small towns, including Cut and Shoot and Shepherd, were experiencing catastrophic flooding, FEMA said, and several rivers were yet to crest.
In Cleveland, one of those towns, the U.S. Coast Guard evacuated a 12-hour-old baby and her mother by helicopter from a hospital that was inaccessible to ambulances because of floodwaters.
The baby was experiencing low oxygen levels at Texas Emergency Hospital, which does not have a neonatal intensive care unit.
The mother and baby were brought to the intensive care unit at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and were in stable condition, said Petty Officer Alejandro Rivera, a Coast Guard spokesperson.
About one-quarter of the 178 river gauges tracked by the National Weather Service in Houston were experiencing flooded conditions, and many were expected to crest over the weekend or early next week.
Areas north of Houston had received 12 to 20 inches of rain since Monday, Jeremy Justice, hydrological operations manager at Harris County Flood Control, said Saturday.
