11-inch rain has Houston under siege

Texas floods swamp roads, homes; 17 dead in 2 states

High water strands motorists Tuesday on Interstate 45 in Houston. Traffic was backed up for miles.
High water strands motorists Tuesday on Interstate 45 in Houston. Traffic was backed up for miles.

HOUSTON -- Floodwaters kept rising Tuesday across much of Texas as storms dumped almost another foot of rain on the Houston area, stranding hundreds of motorists and inundating the famously congested highways that serve the nation's fourth-largest city.

photo

AP/Houston Chronicle

Roberto Salas (left) and Lewis Sternhagen check a flooded car Tuesday on a frontage road near the Willow Waterhole Bayou in Houston. Houston Mayor Annise Parker said two bodies were found in vehicles and a third in the bayou.

Meanwhile, the search went on for about a dozen people who were still missing, including a group that disappeared after a vacation home was swept down the river and slammed into a bridge.

Several more fatalities were reported, four in Houston and four more in central Texas. That brought to 17 the number of people killed by the holiday-weekend storms, with 13 deaths in Texas and four in Oklahoma.

The water continued rising overnight Monday as about 11 more inches of rain fell, much of it in a six-hour period.

The floodwaters affected virtually every part of Houston and paralyzed some areas. Firefighters carried out more than 500 water rescues, most involving stranded motorists. At least 2,500 vehicles were abandoned by drivers seeking higher ground, officials said.

"Given the magnitude and how quickly it happened, in such a short period of time, I've never seen this before," said Rick Flanagan, Houston's emergency management coordinator.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said at a news conference Tuesday that two bodies were found in vehicles and a third was found in a bayou.

A city statement later in the day said the body of an Asian man was found in Braes Bayou. Officials said he's likely a man who was lost during an attempted water rescue early Tuesday that led to the rescue boat capsizing. An elderly couple, ages 85 and 87, are still missing.

Parker said authorities were trying to search property by property but were being hampered by high water. Once the water recedes, she said, the city faces an enormous job towing vehicles and clearing mud from the roadways.

"I want to urge folks to not go out looking for floodwaters, not to go out sightseeing," she said.

She said about 750 vehicles had been removed from the roadways by Tuesday afternoon.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared disasters in 37 counties where more than 1,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed. He said the disaster declarations stretch from "literally the Red River to the Rio Grande."

RAIN IN FORECAST

The drenching weather threatened to linger. National Weather Service forecasts called for a 20 percent to 40 percent chance of thunderstorms through the rest of the week in Houston.

The flooding closed several highways, and the ones that stayed open became a gridlocked mess.

Interstate 45 near downtown was backed up for miles Tuesday morning, and a handful of motorists traveled the wrong way on the highway to retreat from high water.

Some motorists were stuck on I-45 all night, sleeping in their cars until the backup was cleared about 8 a.m.

In downtown Houston, Buffalo Bayou surged far over its banks, and street overpass signs warning truck drivers of a 13- to 14-foot clearance were under water. A popular hiking trail off Interstate 10 outside downtown turned into a fast-moving river.

NBA fans at the Toyota Center, where the Rockets hosted a Western Conference finals game against Golden State on Monday, were asked with about two minutes left in the game not to leave the arena because of the severe weather.

The game ended before 11 p.m., but about 400 people remained in their seats at 1:30 a.m., choosing to stay in the building rather than risk the flooded roads that awaited them outside. Up to 150 people stayed all night, according to arena officials.

Nick Mercadante, 33, was trapped by the storms at Bellerive Ice Center in the Sharpstown area with about 50 others who had gathered for a hockey league game.

"For a while it was flowing like a river down to the highway, so even the people in trucks didn't bother leaving because there was nowhere to go," he said.

Workers tweeted about being stranded at their stores overnight, including the large Galleria Mall.

Houston officials activated an emergency operations center and delayed some employee start times, declaring an emergency at the highest level of its four-tiered emergency management system, for the first time since Hurricane Ike in September 2008. The Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management reported that hundreds of homes had been flooded on the west side of the county, which includes Houston.

"We have thousands and thousands of vehicles that are under water right now, and as the water goes down, we may find more people in vehicles," said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist at the Harris County Flood Control District. "We're conservatively estimating 500 to 700 homes flooded, but that's going to turn out to be on the low end."

Authorities said all streams in Harris County except one returned to their banks by 6:15 p.m. Tuesday.

The district said waters were receding across the county except for the West Fork of the San Jacinto River in Humble. The district said that river will remain above its banks into the weekend.

Houston's Metro mass transit system suspended all rail and bus service, and the Houston Independent School District, with more than 215,000 students, closed all of its schools and offices Tuesday.

One family in Meyerland, a section of Houston that was one of the areas hardest hit areas by the flooding of Brays Bayou, survived the storm in the game room on top of their garage as their single story house flooded overnight.

"We are bunkered down upstairs in this game room, but our house had over 3 feet, maybe 4 feet, of water in it last night and this morning," Michelle Blum said Tuesday, while she, her husband and her four children waited for the waters in the neighborhood to recede.

Twister took 200 homes

Officials in Hays County, about 35 miles southwest of Austin, said 30 people who had been reported as missing were accounted for by midafternoon Tuesday.

Crews were also searching for victims and assessing damage just across the Texas-Mexico border in Ciudad Acuna, where a tornado killed 13 people Monday.

Some of the worst flooding in Texas was in Wimberley, a popular tourist town along the Blanco River in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio. That's where the vacation home was swept away.

The "search component" of the mission ended Monday night, meaning no more survivors were expected to be found, said Trey Hatt, a spokesman for the Hays County Emergency Operations Center.

Hays County officials said 11 people remain missing in the area. That includes eight people who were in a vacation home that was swept away and slammed into a bridge downstream.

Two 6-year-olds and a 4-year-old were among those inside. They have been missing since early Sunday morning.

Authorities said a third body was pulled from the Blanco on Tuesday. They have identified those pulled from the Blanco River only as two men and one woman.

The Blanco crested above 40 feet -- more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet. The river swamped Interstate 35 and closed parts of the busy north-south highway. Rescuers used pontoon boats and a helicopter to pull people out.

Hundreds of trees along the Blanco were uprooted or snapped, and they collected in piles of debris up to 20 feet high.

The deaths in Texas included a 14-year-old who was found with his dog in a storm drain; a high school senior who died Saturday after her car was caught in high water; and a man whose mobile home was destroyed by a reported tornado.

The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management also reported four fatalities between Saturday and Monday after severe flooding and reports of tornadoes.

In Ciudad Acuna, Mayor Evaristo Perez Rivera said 300 people were treated at local hospitals after the twister, and up to 200 homes had been completely destroyed in the city of 125,000 across from Del Rio, Texas.

Thirteen people were confirmed dead -- 10 adults and three infants, including one who was ripped from its mother's arms by the storm.

Information for this article was contributed by Kristie Rieken, Paul J. Weber, David Warren, Jamie Stengle, David J. Phillip and staff members of The Associated Press; by Manny Fernandez, Richard Perez-Pena, Michael Wines, Melissa Gaskill and Michelle O'Donnell of The New York Times; and by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 05/27/2015

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