The Latest on Tropical Storm Harvey (all times local) :
HOUSTON (AP) – The Latest on Tropical Storm Harvey (all times local) :
6 p.m.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is adding four East Texas counties to the 54 Southeast Texas counties already covered by his Hurricane Harvey disaster declaration.
The Republican on Monday added Angelina, Trinity, Sabine and Orange counties to the counties already declared disaster areas. The declaration makes it easier for the state to manage resources essential for search, rescue and relief.
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5: 30 p.m.
A meteorologist has calculated that by the end of Wednesday Harvey will have saturated southeast Texas with enough water to fill all the NFL and Division 1 college football stadiums more than 100 times over.
Ryan Maue of WeatherBell Analytics says that already 15 trillion gallons (57 trillion liters) of rain have fallen on a large area, and an additional 5 trillion (19 trillion liters) or 6 trillion gallons (23 trillion liters) are forecast by the end of Wednesday.
An Army Corps of Engineers official said Monday that Harvey is bringing amounts of rainfall seen only once in a thousand years.
Edmond Russo, a Corps deputy district engineer for Texas, made the comment at a Houston news conference Monday
Two dams – at Barker Reservoir and Addicks Reservoir – protecting downtown Houston and under the Corps’ management are built to withstand 1,000-year floods. Some levees in outlying areas are designed to protect against flooding that happens every 100 or 200 years.
Meteorologists say that sometime Tuesday or early Wednesday parts of the Houston region will break the nearly 40-year-old U. S. record for the biggest rainfall from a tropical system – 48 inches, set by Tropical Storm Amelia in 1978 in Texas.
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5 p.m.
The National Hurricane Center says Harvey has slightly increased in strength as it went back to warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
It now has sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph) , up 5 mph (8 kph) .
Forecasters expect Harvey to stay over water and at 45 mph (72 kph) for 36 hours and then head back inland east of Houston sometime Wednesday. The forecast has the storm then zipping north and losing its tropical storm strength and then its tropical characteristics.
Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered just off the coast, dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm.
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4: 20 p.m.
Officials say the ongoing release of water from two flood-control reservoirs in the Houston area is not expected to increase the levels of a swollen bayou that runs through heavily populated neighborhoods in west and central Houston and through the city’s downtown.
Buffalo Bayou has swollen due to torrential rain from Harvey.
Jeff Lindner is a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. He said Monday that levels on Buffalo Bayou have fallen from where they were Sunday. He says they’re holding steady despite the ongoing release of water from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs in west Houston.
The Army Corps of Engineers says the controlled release into Buffalo Bayou is being done to relief pressure on the two aging reservoirs. The Corps says if the releases weren’t done, excess water could go over the reservoirs’ spillways and flood a large area.
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3: 55 p.m.
Authorities say a woman has been killed in the Houston area when a large tree dislodged by heavy rains from Harvey toppled onto her trailer home.
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Captain Bryan Carlisle says that the woman was killed around noon Monday in Porter. Her husband has reported that she was napping when the tree fell. Porter Fire Department firefighters had to wade through chest-level water to evacuate the woman’s husband, remove the tree and extract the body.
Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered just off the coast, dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm.
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3: 25 p.m.
Volunteers have used a dump truck to rescue about 20 people from a flooded Houston-area neighborhood.
The rescue effort happened Monday after some residents of Sugar Land got a constable’s attention to say they needed help to escape the waist-deep water. The officer managed to arrange a private truck.
Several residents then used small rafts and air mattresses to float out to the vehicle. Children were handed from one person to another to be loaded into the back of the truck.
The truck then headed to dry land at a minor league baseball park that’s been opened up as a staging area for people to evacuate.
Volunteers on personal watercraft and in kayaks also helped evacuate people from the subdivision threatened by the fast-swelling Brazos River.
Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered just off the coast, dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm.
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3 p.m.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner says the city is working on opening another « major » shelter for people fleeing flooding from Harvey as the George S. Brown Convention Center reaches capacity.
Turner toured the convention center Monday, hugging evacuees and asking how they were doing. The convention center was already more than halfway to its 5,000-person capacity.
Turner said the city was considering its options for another major shelter, but did not say which buildings could be used.
Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered just off the coast, dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm.
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2: 50 p.m.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is again praising the federal government’s response to Harvey.
Abbott said at a news conference in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Monday that he had spoken « on multiple occasions » to President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet.
Abbott said, « I would have to grade the federal government’s response as an A-plus. » He said the storm was « if not the largest, one of the largest disasters America has ever faced. » But he says, « to see the swift response from the federal government is pretty much unparalleled. »
Abbot expressed similar sentiments Sunday. It’s a departure for Abbott. He was elected governor in 2014 decrying federal « overreach » and boasting about using his former positon as Texas attorney general to sue the Obama administration nearly 30 times.
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2: 40 p.m.
Officials are preparing to evacuate one of the nation’s busiest trauma centers as flooding from Harvey threatened to compromise the hospital’s supply of medicine and food.
A spokesman at Houston’s Office of Emergency Management said Monday that all 350 patients at Ben Taub Hospital would be evacuated, hopefully within a day. Floodwater and sewage got into the main hospital building’s basement and affected pharmacy, food service and other key operations. Patients will be sent to other area hospitals until repairs are made.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center also canceled outpatient services, appointments and surgeries at all Houston-area locations through Tuesday, and was asking patients not to attempt to travel because of high water in the Texas Medical Center area.
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2: 35 p.m.
A mandatory evacuation has been ordered for a Southeast Texas city of about 20,000 that’s been inundated by Harvey floodwaters.
Dickinson police announced the city’s mandatory evacuation that took effect at 2 p.m. Monday.
Dickinson is a low-lying city about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Houston. It’s along Dickinson Bayou. Crews on Sunday rescued more than 20 residents and staffers from an assisted-living center in Dickinson that flooded.
The police statement cited the fragile infrastructure in the city amid flooding, limited working utilities and concern for the forecast track of Harvey. Transportation was available for those needing help leaving Dickinson.
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2: 30 p.m.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency says its response to Hurricane Harvey is « quickly drawing down » the reserves in the agency’s disaster fund.
FEMA says it’s prioritizing its response to Harvey over earlier disasters to stretch the life of its disaster aid fund to make sure it doesn’t run out of money.
In a message to Capitol Hill, FEMA says it will only fund immediate emergency response « so that FEMA can continue its focus on response and urgent recovery efforts without interruption. »
FEMA’s most recent report says it has more than $3 billion in its disaster fund. About half of that was supposed to be spent to respond to earlier disasters, but Monday’s announcement frees up more of the money for responding to Harvey.
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2: 10 p.m.
A television station is reporting that six family members are believed to have drowned in Houston when their van was swept away by floodwaters.
The KHOU-TV report was attributed to three family members the station didn’t identify. No bodies have been recovered.
Houston police Chief Art Acevedo tells The Associated Press he has no information about the KHOU report but added that he’s « really worried about how many bodies we’re going to find » from Harvey’s devastating flooding.
According to the station, four children – the youngest, a 6-year-old girl – and their grandparents are feared dead after the van hit high floods Sunday afternoon when crossing a bridge in Greens Bayou.
The driver of the vehicle, the children’s great-uncle, reportedly escaped before the van was submerged and grabbed onto a tree limb as the van sunk. He told the children inside to try to escape through the back door, but they were unable to get out.
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2 p.m.
Former President George W. Bush says he and former first lady Laura Bush are confident that communities hit by Harvey « will recover and thrive. »
Bush, who lives in Dallas, released a statement Monday that he and his wife are « proud of the people of Texas for showing the resilience and compassion of our state. » He says they’re « moved by the heroic work of the first responders and volunteers who are putting themselves at risk to save others. »
Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered just off the coast, dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm.
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1: 45 p.m.
Texas regulators say a 150,000-barrel (6.3 million gallon) fuel storage tank spilled an unspecified amount of gasoline east of Houston after tilting over due to large volumes of rain from Harvey.
