Houston struggles to determine extent of Harvey flooding impact as Trump visits Texas to survey devastation

HOUSTON — The remnants of deadly Hurricane Harvey menaced Texas and Louisiana alike on Tuesday, while a reservoir west of downtown Houston spilled over for the first time in its history due to record-shattering rainfall.
President Trump arrived in Texas on Tuesday to survey the ongoing devastation, while storm clouds continued a drenching onslaught that has already dropped more than three feet of rain in some areas. Trump’s visit, following his pledge of swift action by the federal government to provide relief to states affected by Harvey, comes on the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall in Louisiana.

Trump came to a state still struggling to determine the extent of its tragedy. The death toll in Texas had reached at least 15 people by Tuesday afternoon, officials said, but they warned it could rise as authorities pursue reports of people apparently lost in the torrential downpours unleashed by Harvey since Friday.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said Tuesday that officers in the city have rescued more than 3,500 people so far amid Harvey’s flooding. But the scope of the devastation remained unclear, as the Houston mayor said officials are “still trying to assess” how many people are missing.
Lashing rain continued to pound Houston on Tuesday, falling on people who desperately sought groceries or trudged through water in search of shelter. The streets downtown were littered with abandoned cars, and almost no stores appeared to be open, though people said they needed food and supplies.
Outside a Kroger grocery store in southwest Houston, dozens of people had lined up hours before the store opened. Another crowd had lined up outside Fiesta, a nearby grocery store, where the line grew so long that store officials were limiting how many people they let inside.
“Meat,” said Morgan Lewis, 23, who was first in line at Kroger at 7:30 a.m. “I need some meat. I’m tired of eating sandwiches.”
The National Weather Service reported that more than 42 inches of rain has already fallen in Houston due to Harvey. Some parts of Louisiana have also seen more than a foot of rain, and flash flood warnings and watches were in effect for much of the Lake Charles region as the rain is expected to continue. New Orleans was under a tornado and flash flood watch until Thursday.
In Texas, one of the two massive stormwater reservoirs to the west of downtown Houston began spilling over on Tuesday — despite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers efforts Monday to release water as water levels in the reservoirs swelled to record levels.
The Army Corps of Engineers said that water was spilling out from around the dam gates of the Addicks Reservoir, and officials also said they expect the Barker Reservoir — to the south of Addicks — to also begin overflowing some time Tuesday. Near the Barker dam, helicopters were attempting to rescue families, while some people spent their morning hopping onto jet skis and into boats to help as well.

z“We never flood,” said a dismayed Gloria Strayhorn, a retired interior designer who was out for a walk with her husband Bill. They were in raincoats and shook their heads at a nearby man-made lake that was overflowing, saying these were only adding to the problem when the dam releases: “They were just refurbished this spring and they spent so much money setting up benches and now look.”
Officials in Brazoria County, south of Houston, also warned that a levee there had breached.
Harvey continued grinding toward the northeast, with its center expected to be just off the upper Texas coast through Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center said. After that, the storm is forecast to move inland on the northwestern Gulf Coast on Wednesday.
Forecasters say more than a foot of additional rain is still expected to fall through Friday over parts of the Texas coast and Louisiana, and the National Weather Service warned Tuesday of potential flooding in southern Mississippi as well as southeastern Louisiana.
Trump arrived in Corpus Christi, Tex., on Tuesday morning, and intends to visit Austin, the capital, later in the day. His spokeswoman told reporters on Air Force Once that Trump will visit “a different part of the state” on Saturday, while he has also discussed visiting Louisiana the same day.
During a news briefing in Corpus Christi, Trump praised the response from local officials in Texas as well as federal authorities who were grappling with the devastating storm.
“This is of epic proportion,” Trump said of the storm. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”
About 50 Trump supporters gathered near the runway to wave signs bearing his name and welcome him. Suzanne Guggenheim, wearing a red hat bearing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, said she felt he had handled the disaster well.
A small group of young Democrats protested Trump’s arrival. Marco Garcia, chairman of the Texas Young Democrats Latinx Caucus, called Trump’s visit is disrespectful of the region and of the nation’s Latino community.
“Trump should be focusing on getting help to the people who need it, not taking resources by tying up the roads and creating chaos in this region that needs so much help,” said Garcia, a 24-year-old business management major at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, who said he has been helping evacuees from Rockport who have no shoes or food.
The Department of Labor on Tuesday announced that it had approved an initial $10 million grant to help with cleanup efforts in Texas. Trump on Monday declared “emergency conditions” in Louisiana, and not long before that, federal authorities had warned Harvey could force more than 30,000 people from their homes by the time skies are expected to clear later this week.
Life across Texas has abruptly shifted as floodwater turned streets into rivers. Hundreds of schools shut down in the state. Thousands of people have already piled into shelters in Houston and beyond, seeking safety from the storm without a clear idea of when, or if, they could return home.
The George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston had taken in 9,200 people as of Tuesday morning, said Charles Maltbie, a regional disaster officer for the Red Cross who is at the convention. That number is nearly double the center’s anticipated capacity of 5,000.
The convention center is the evacuation site for all air evacuations, Maltbie said, and bus evacuations are being diverted to other shelters around the city. When asked what the center’s top capacity is, Maltbie said: “We will meet the need.”
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Tuesday that city officials have identified other “mega shelter locations” that will be set up to house people, though he did not name these other facilities.
The immediate focus for many remained on Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city and a sprawling metropolitan area that is facing a deluge without precedent. Even neighborhoods far from creeks or bayous flooded. The hardest-hit areas were in the south and southeast, the downstream end of the waterways.
Of those confirmed dead as of Tuesday, at least eight were in Harris County, which includes Houston. Officials also said some of the other people were killed in the South Texas town of Rockport, near where Harvey made landfall; and in Porter, a town north of Houston, where a woman in her 60s was napping when a large oak tree landed on her mobile home.
Air Force Maj. Gen. James Witham, the National Guard Bureau’s director of domestic operations, said there are currently about 3,000 Texas National Guardsmen on duty in response to the hurricane, with about 1,000 more joining them within a day. That number could potentially multiply nearly eightfold in coming days, as 20,000 to 30,000 additional National Guardsmen join the mission.
There are currently about 30 National Guard helicopters carrying out search-and-rescue missions, medical evacuations and other assignments, and the Texas government already has requested 24 more, Witham said.
“There is the potential that we could grow up to 100 helicopters as required by the state of Texas as we continue to respond to the historic flooding around the Houston area,” he said.
The southwest sections of the Houston area may be the next venue for catastrophe. The Brazos River, which runs through Fort Bend County, home to more than 716,000 people, has been swelling as the runoff from the storm collects in its banks. National Weather Service models showed the river rising to 59 feet by Tuesday, topping the previous record of 54.7 feet.
Earlier Tuesday, evacuation orders were given for two prisons with thousands of inmates near the Brazos.
Fort Bend County Judge John Hebert warned Monday night that more than a hundred square miles along the river could flood overnight and into Tuesday as the river swells to unprecedented heights.
“They can guarantee we’ll have a record flood in for Fort Bend County,” he said. “In areas under mandatory evacuation, the danger is very real.”
But with virtually all the main thoroughfares already closed because of high water, many of the affected residents saw no way out.
Some who did evacuate ran into difficulties Monday as they tried to reach shelters. In north Houston, for example, rescuers who picked up people forced out of their drenched homes brought them to a fire station to be transported to the M.O. Campbell Center, a school gym and activity center that had been converted to a shelter.
When the shelter reached capacity, its doors were shut, and at least 300 people were stranded at the fire station.
The horror stories led authorities to urge patience and persistence on the part of residents needing help. Among those helping with the rescue efforts alongside first responders were volunteers with boats. On Monday afternoon, dozens from both groups crowded near the Grand Vista subdivision on Harlem Road in the Brazos River area, on the edge of the water that stretched from the road to the rainy horizon.
Boats were unloading evacuees — among them the elderly and children — onto the road, then turning back into the flood.
“It messed me up seeing the kids and babies,” said Jorge Ramirez, 28, who brought over his Alumacraft flat-bottom boat after seeing on Facebook that folks were stuck in this neighborhood. “That’s who we’re trying to get out first.”
He said he’d made about five trips in four hours.
Authorities also faced new questions about whether they should have evacuated Houston. Asked Monday about the decision to recommend that people shelter in place rather than leave the city, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said there was no point in thinking about past decisions.
“We are where we are now,” he said.
Berman reported from Washington. Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, Alex Horton, Dylan Baddour and Brittney Martin in Houston; Ed O’Keefe, Wesley Lowery, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Katie Zezima, Brian Murphy, Sandhya Somashekhar, Amy B Wang and Dan Lamothe in Washington; Ashley Cusick in New Orleans; and Mary Lee Grant in Corpus Christi, Tex., contributed to this report.