Six dead in second day of Houston floods
Scores of Houston-area schools remained closed as heavy rain killed six people in two days and caused entire neighbourhoods to flood.
|||Houston - Scores of Houston-area schools closed for a second straight day on Tuesday as more rain pelted the fourth most populous US city overnight after a record deluge on Monday, causing floods that left six dead and led to more than 1 000 water rescues.
The National Weather Service has put a flash flood watch in effect for large parts of the Houston area and into southwestern Louisiana on Tuesday. As much as 18 inches (45 cm) fell in some areas of Harris County, which includes Houston, and the weather service said heaviest daily rain records were set on Monday at the city's two main airports.
A low pressure system in Colorado and surrounding states pulled moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, sparking a string of heavy thunderstorms that drenched nine counties for hours early on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
Such heavy storms that park atop the city for such long stretches can quickly overwhelm Houston's system of drainage channels that move water back to the Gulf via the Houston Ship Channel, particularly if the ground is already saturated. The city faced similar widespread flooding during a Memorial Day storm last year and Tropical Storm Allison's torrent in 2001.
More than 6,300 customers were without power in the Houston area on Tuesday afternoon, a sharp decrease from more than 100,000 a day earlier, CenterPoint Energy said.
Flood waters that blocked roads to downtown and other main areas of the city have mostly receded, and officials said most people should be able to make it back to work.
“The city is back to normal operations but be careful driving in. Now we plan to help people recover from the flooding waters,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a tweet.
At a news conference, he said about 20 inspection teams from city hall were in the field and that 183 houses have been damaged. The city is moving quickly to remove debris so that it does not pile up and shelters are being set up, he said.
“I know that there may be some who may want to go back to their homes, but they may not be habitable. We are working at the same time to find temporary or permanent housing,” Turner said.
More than 100 flights were canceled on Tuesday at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. More than 1 000 flights were canceled at major Texas airports on Monday due to the storms, it said.
Rains in other parts of Texas were expected to cause rivers to crest later in the week, bringing floods to downstream areas.
Texas oil fields and refineries around Galveston Bay were not impacted, though a gasoline-making unit at Royal Dutch Shell Plc's joint-venture Deer Park refinery was shut for up to six weeks, two sources said on Tuesday.
It was not clear if the outage was related to rains, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about refinery operations.
Reuters
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