By Ray Sanchez, Nicole Chavez and Holly Yan, CNN
Flood-stricken southeast Texas struggled Thursday with a new series of blows that left one city without running water, the operators of a flood-damaged chemical plant warning of additional fires and at least one hospital unable to care for patients.
Nearly a week after Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Texas coast, desperate residents remain stranded without food and water in the wake of unprecedented flooding.
Meanwhile, authorities continue to search for survivors and make helicopter rescues from rooftops as the death toll from Harvey and its aftermath climbed to at least 39.
Given the disaster’s scope, the commanding officer who led the federal response to Hurricane Katrina a dozen years ago questioned the adequacy of current relief efforts.
“When you have a combination of hurricane winds, flooding now for five days and you start losing the water and the electric grid, this is a game changer,” retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré told CNN on Thursday.
“Losing electricity itself is a disaster for over a 24-hour period in America to any person because we lose access to water, we lose access to sewers, we lose our ability to communicate.”
The dangers emerging from the historic storm seem to increase by the day.
Beaumont, east of Houston, has no running water after both its water pumps failed, forcing a hospital to shut down. City officials could not say when service would be restored.
In Crosby, two blasts rocked a flooded chemical plant, and more could come.
And in Houston, authorities were looking door-to-door for victims, hoping to find survivors but realizing that the death toll could rise.
Rainfall totals would fill Houston Astrodome 85,000 times
The storm dumped an estimated 27 trillion gallons of rain over Texas and Louisiana over six days, said Ryan Maue, of the weather analytics company WeatherBell.
That’s enough to fill the Houston Astrodome 85,000 times or San Francisco Bay 10.6 times at high tide.
“We will see additional losses of life, if history is any precedent here,” Tom Bossert, homeland security adviser to President Trump, told reporters Thursday.
The storm has damaged or destroyed about 100,000 homes, Bossert said.
President Donald Trump plans to donate $1 million of his money to help storm victims, according the White House.
(White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump plans to donate $1 million of his personal money to disaster relief efforts in the wake of Harvey. Courtesy of CNN and YouTube)
“You should continue to have confidence in what we’re doing as a government,” Bossert said.
“But I would be remiss if I didn’t stop and say that none of that matters if you’re an affected individual.”
In the hard-hit city of Rockport, Vice President Mike Pence addressed residents outside a church.
“President Trump sent us here to say, ‘We are with you. The American people are with you,'” he said.
Company warns of more blasts
A pair of blasts at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby sent plumes of smoke into the sky Thursday morning, and the company warned more blasts could follow.
“We want local residents to be aware that product is stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of additional explosion remains,” Arkema said.
“Please do not return to the area within the evacuation zone until local emergency response authorities announce it is safe to do so.”
The twin blasts Thursday morning happened after organic peroxides overheated.
The chemicals need to be kept cool, but the temperature rose after the plant lost power, officials said.
Containers popped. One caught fire and sent black smoke 30 to 40 feet into the air.
The thick smoke “might be irritating to the eyes, skin and lungs,” Arkema officials said.
(Hurricane Harvey flooded Arkema chemical plant in Texas, causing chemical explosions. Why did it happen and could it have been prevented? Courtesy of Fox News and YouTube)
Fifteen Harris County sheriff’s deputies were hospitalized, but the smoke they inhaled was not believed to be toxic, the department said. The deputies have all been released.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said nothing toxic was emitted and there was no imminent danger to the community.
Here’s how to help victims of Hurricane Harvey
Three other containers storing the same chemical are at risk of “overpressurization,” said Jeff Carr of Griffin Communications Group, which is representing Arkema.
Arkema shut down the facility as Harvey approached last week.
The company evacuated everyone within 1.5 miles of the plant as a precaution after it was flooded under more than 5 feet of water.
The company has said there’s a small possibility the organic peroxide, which is used in the production of plastic resins, could seep into floodwaters, without igniting or burning.
Harvey forced the shut down of many chemical or oil plants, including the Colonial Pipeline, which carries huge amounts of gasoline and other fuel between Houston and the East Coast.
Valero and Motiva, the largest refinery in the country, have also closed some facilities.
‘People are freaking out’ in Beaumont
Extreme flooding caused both of Beaumont’s water pumps to fail, leaving the city of 118,000 with no running water.
“We will have to wait until the water levels from this historical flood recede before we can determine the extent of damage and make any needed repairs,” the city said.
“There is no way to determine how long this will take at this time.”
Residents lined up at stores hours before they opened Thursday in hopes of getting whatever bottled water they could find.
(Rising water is forcing new rescues east of Houston. Boats and helicopters were used to help people in cities like Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas. Courtesy of CBS This Morning and YouTube)
“It’s crazy,” said Khayvin Williams, who started waiting in line at Market Basket at 6:50 a.m.
“People are freaking out.”
At a local Walmart, Jeffrey Farley said the store was only allowing 20 people in at a time and was rationing water to three cases per customer.
He got in line at 6:30 a.m. and waited until 8:30 to get his water.
“It’s an insult to injury for a lot of folks,” Farley said. “The water situation has made things dire for everyone here.”
Beaumont, along with Port Arthur, was devastated after Harvey made another landfall Wednesday.
The failure of the city’s water pump forced the closure of Beaumont-based Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas.
“Due to the citywide lack of services, we have no other alternative but to discontinue all services, which will include emergency services,” the hospital system said Thursday.
Patients in stretchers and wheelchairs were evacuated to other hospitals by ambulance and helicopter.
“We had no idea when we went to bed at midnight that … we’d get the call that says the hospital would need to think about the city’s water being lost,” hospital spokeswoman Mary Poole said.
“We did not expect that and that’s a game changer for us.”
‘I have no food. I have no water.’
About 20 miles southeast of Beaumont, the pleas for help keep growing in Port Arthur.
Julia Chatham and her neighbors were trapped in her home, with virtually no supplies.
“All I have in my house is power. I have no food. I have no water,” Chatham said.
“I’m stuck upstairs. It’s just me and my dog. And I’m upstairs with my other neighbors. It’s like five of us up here.”
Those lucky enough to get to a shelter in Port Arthur were deluged again, when murky brown floodwater filled an evacuation shelter.
(Homes and shelters were flooded and the largest oil refinery in the U.S. was shut down after heavy rains flooded Port Arthur, east of Houston, overnight Tuesday. Courtesy of The New York Times and YouTube. Posted on Aug 30, 2017)
Actress Amber Chardae Robinson, speaking by phone from Beaumont, said getting out of Port Arthur was virtually impossible.
“Every avenue we use to get out of the city is flooded — to get to Houston is flooded, to get to Louisiana is flooded,” she said.
“So people are just trying to figure out ways to get their family out of there at this point.”
In most of Orange County, east of Beaumont, a mandatory evacuation order was issued Thursday afternoon by Judge Stephen Brint Carlton.
The order primarily involves areas along the Neches and Sabine rivers.
Across the state, families are searching tirelessly for missing relatives six days after Harvey first pummeled the Texas coast
The Coast Guard has rescued more than 6,000 people, and Houston police and firefighters have rescued several thousand more.
Among the storm-related deaths are a Houston man who was electrocuted while walking in floodwaters and a mother whose body was floating about a half mile from her car.
(A mother and daughter were swept away in Beaumont, Texas. First responders found them Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 29, 2017, the toddler still clinging to her mother, floating toward a railroad trestle, police said in a statement. Courtesy of PennLive and YouTube)
Rescuers found her daughter clinging to her body. The child is in stable condition after suffering from hypothermia.
“We just pray that the body count … won’t rise significantly,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said Wednesday.
But Houston received a bit of good news Thursday. The pool level at Barker Reservoir — which officials feared would overflow — has peaked and is going down, the Army Corps of Engineers said.
And the city’s Addicks Reservoir, which was overwhelmed and caused widespread flooding this week, has also peaked.
The water in that reservoir is also receding.
In Victoria, about 120 miles southwest of Houston, Mary Martinez returned to her heavily demanaged home Wednesday.
“I did not think it was going to be this bad,” said Martinez, who received assistance from volunteers with Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse. “I was speechless.”
Countless stories of heroism have emerged in the aftermath of Harvey, including by some of the victims.
(The Coast Guard responds to search and rescue requests in response to Hurricane Harvey in the greater Houston Metro Area. The Coast Guard is working closely with all federal, state and local emergency operation centers and has established incident command posts to manage search and rescue operations. Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard and YouTube. Posted on Aug. 28, 2017)
Andrew Pasek was walking through 4 feet of water trying to get to his sister’s house when he accidentally stepped on a live electrical wire.
“He felt the charge and knew something was wrong right away and tried to shake it off right away,” said his mother, Jodell.
The 25-year-old quickly asked a friend to get away from him “because if you do, you know, you will go, too,” he told his friend.
Pasek was electrocuted. His mother said no one could try to resuscitate him for an hour, until the electricity was turned off.
“It could have been anybody,” she said.
CNN’s Paul Murphy, Dakin Andone, Nick Valencia, AnneClaire Stapleton, Amanda Watts, Tina Burnside, Dave Alsup, Keith Allen and Chuck Johnston contributed to this report.
Original post http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/31/us/harvey-houston-texas-flood/index.html
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