Texas death toll mounts as Harvey hits land again in Louisiana (Video)

 

The biggest rainstorm in US mainland history made a second landfall on the Gulf Coast on Thursday, cutting a devastating path across southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana - even as the sun began to emerge in Houston and some residents returned to their waterlogged homes.

A string of coastal Texas cities was engulfed in water as Harvey came ashore again just west of Cameron, Louisiana.

"Yep, we got some water, y'all," Port Arthur, Texas, Mayor Derrick Freeman said in a live Facebook video Wednesday morning as he sloshed through knee-deep water inside his home. "Harvey wasn't playing."

Mayor Pro Tem Cal Jones estimated that at least 80 percent of the city, east of Houston on the Gulf Coast, was underwater.

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"I'm helpless as the rest of them," said Jones, who was trying to get to a store to obtain supplies for diabetic residents. "We got caught by surprise. We weren't expecting this kind of flood. We didn't even get a command centre because we weren't expecting this kind of outcome.

"Right now, we're at God's mercy," he said.

Fields and roads were flooded around nearby Beaumont, Texas, and heavy rains continued to douse the region.

Colette Sulcer, 41, and her 3-year-old daughter were swept away by high floodwaters there Tuesday after getting out of their car near a flooded freeway. The girl clung to her mother for half a mile before police officers and fire rescue divers spotted them in a canal and plucked them out of the water just before they went under a trestle. The mother died, but the child was in stable condition.

The storm produced at least one tornado, which touched down Wednesday in the southern Mississippi town of Petal. Local news outlets broadcast images of knocked-down trees and damaged roofs, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

"We can't rule out the potential for more brief tornadoes the rest of this afternoon and maybe tonight, and then the threat will be there again tomorrow," said Thomas Winesett, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Jackson, Miss.

Harvey no longer has the power of the Category 4 hurricane that slammed the Gulf Coast late Friday - it was downgraded Wednesday evening to a tropical depression - but the National Hurricane Centre warned of ongoing "catastrophic and life-threatening" flooding.

Over the last five days, tens of thousands of people in Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, and across southeast Louisiana have had to evacuate. More than 30 people have died, including a Houston police officer who drowned in his car while driving to work.

The Texas National Guard had made more than 8,500 rescues and 26,000 evacuations, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday. He announced he was seeking an additional 10,000 National Guard members from other states to help the 14,000 Texas Guard members who were activated.

"The worst is not yet over for southeast Texas," the Republican governor said.

Houston officials imposed a midnight-to-5-a.m. curfew after the arrest of a crew of suspected armed robbers accused of hijacking vehicles, and officials warned that others were impersonating Homeland Security investigators. There also were fears of looting as thousands of houses were left partially submerged.

SIX MEMBERS OF ONE FAMILY KILLED

A white van containing the bodies of four children and their great-grandparents was found Wednesday in Greens Bayou in east Houston. Virginia Saldivar, 59, said her brother-in-law, Sam, was driving her grandchildren and her husband's parents to higher ground Sunday when the current swept up the van.

In Montgomery County, Texas, 33-year-old Joshua Feuerstein of Conroe died when he drove his pickup through a barricade into standing water Monday, sheriff's Capt. Bryan Carlisle reported Wednesday.

The Sheriff's Office in Harris County, which includes Houston, said Wednesday morning that the Coast Guard was leading a search in northeast Houston for two civilian rescuers missing after a boat crash.

Since Harvey made initial landfall Friday, some areas around Houston have seen more than of 50 inches of rain - about what they usually receive in a year.

As the rain let up in Houston, businesses began to reopen. In the Montrose neighbourhood west of downtown, neighbours ventured out in boots and sneakers to survey the damage.

With its app working again Wednesday, Uber was offering free rides to shelters in Houston, according to a tweet from Mayor Sylvester Turner. "Thank you!" the mayor said.

Warnings from the National Weather Service in Houston and Galveston became less dire: "Improving weather conditions to come," it announced after cancelling its tropical storm warning and storm surge watch.

But many areas still remained impassable. Main highways and other roads were washed out, and more than 10,000 people were temporarily homeless at the main shelter in the city's downtown George R. Brown Convention Centre.

City officials have asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for cots and food for an additional 10,000 people, and are opening a shelter at the Toyota Centre, a downtown Houston arena.

Early Wednesday, Harris County officials warned that a levee protecting the Inverness Forest subdivision in the north part of the county could fail after a portion of its base eroded.

A mandatory evacuation of part of the area was in place while crews attempted to shore up the levee, said Jeff Lindner, meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District.

Thousands of homes west of downtown, upstream from the Barker and Addicks reservoirs, flooded after dams backed up from heavy rainfall.

With some homes filled with water, some residents would not be able to return for several weeks, Lindner said at a morning news conference. He was not sure whether the homes would be rebuilt.

"When water sits in a house for weeks, the house begins to degrade, and so we're not sure what the condition of those homes will be when residents return in a few weeks," Lindner said. "Will these homes be allowed to be rebuilt or will they be rebuilt? That's a question that we'll have to look at going forward."

Lindner said he did not expect more homes to flood.

"The watersheds are falling, and while most of them remain well over their banks and some of them remain at record levels, the water levels are going down," he said. "And that's for the first time in several days."

OIL PLANT SHUTDOWN

In Port Arthur, Motiva Enterprises began a controlled shutdown of its massive plant, the nation's largest oil refinery. Employees won't go back to work until floodwaters recede.

Five miles across town, floodwater began to spill into a shelter for evacuees. At the Robert A. "Bob" Bowers Civic Centre, residents perched on cots standing in murky brown water.

And the death toll kept rising. On Wednesday, Beaumont officials said a second woman's body was found on the north side at 7:25 a.m.

Tuesday night, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences updated its storm-related deaths to include that of an 89-year-old woman, Agnes Stanley, whose body was found floating in 4 feet of floodwater in a home.

The body of another woman, 76, was discovered floating in water near a vehicle. Her name was not released.

A 45-year-old man, Travis Lynn Callihan, left his vehicle and fell into floodwaters. He was taken to a hospital, where he died Monday.

Some 13,000 people have been rescued in the Houston area, and more than 17,000 have sought refuge in Texas shelters. With the water still high in places and many hard-hit areas still inaccessible, those numbers seemed certain to increase.

About 195,000 people have filed for financial assistance, and about US$35 million in direct aid has been distributed - numbers expected to climb dramatically in coming days and weeks, the chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.

"This is going to be an incredibly large disaster," Brock Long said in Washington. "We're not going to know the true cost for years to come. ... But it's going to be huge."

Harvey initially came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane in Texas on Friday (Saturday NZT), then executed a U-turn and lingered off the coast as a tropical storm for days, inundating flood-prone Houston.

AP