Hurricane Harvey has dumped the most rain on the continental US in history it was revealed today - as catastrophic scenes unfold in Houston with shelters overwhelmed with survivors, a curfew in place to prevent looting, dams overflowing and a chemical plant at risk of exploding.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, there are currently about 20,000 Hurricane Harvey evacuees in shelters.
Many of Houston's evacuees are crammed into the city's convention center which is overcrowded now with 10,000 evacuees - double what officials initially planned.
The George R Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, Texas, has a capacity of up to 5,000 people, but Monday night 9,021 people stayed in the center, many sleeping on chairs and on the floor because of a shortage of cots.
By Tuesday night, 10,000 people were staying at the convention center, with others being sent to the Toyota Center, the arena that is home to the Houston Rockets NBA team.
Houston's mayor said the convention center would remain as the primary shelter in Houston.
More people continued to flock to the city's overcrowded main shelter Tuesday as floodwaters kept rising after five consecutive days of rain that set a new continental US record for rainfall for a tropical system.
In Cedar Bayou, Texas, rains reached 51.88inches Tuesday afternoon, the record for Texas and the continental US, but does not pass the record of 52inches of rain in Kauai, Hawaii in 1950 from Tropical Cyclone Hiki. That record was set before Hawaii became a state.
The previous continental US record was 48inches set in 1978 in Medina, Texas, by Tropical Storm Amelia. A weather station southeast of Houston reported 49.32inches of rain as of Tuesday morning August 29,2017
No comments:
Post a Comment