Face of Nation : A swath of East Texas remained under a flash flood watch early Friday as the remnants of Tropical Depression Imelda drifted north after killing at least two people.
Rainfall intensity began to weaken late Thursday, the National Weather Service said, ending a day of about 1,700 combined rescues and evacuations in Harris County alone.
Some of the county’s 4.7 million residents, which includes Houston, might not see waters recede until the weekend, officials said. Authorities planned to work to clear freeways of abandoned vehicles overnight, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
In Jefferson County, a 19-year-old man drowned and was electrocuted while trying to move his horse during a lightning storm, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Crystal Holmes said. A man also died after being rescued from a submerged van, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez tweeted.
More than 40 inches of rain drenched Jefferson County in the past three days, the National Weather Service office in Houston said, making Imelda the seventh wettest tropical cyclone in U.S. history. Houston authorities said three people had minor injuries after the flat roof of a post office facility collapsed amid the pounding rains.
George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston ordered a full ground stop, then struggled with arrival delays averaging almost four hours, the Federal Aviation Administration reported. Metro Houston shut down public transportation, and Mayor Sylvester Turner announced that “high water assets” were deployed in parts of the city.
“It’s bad. Homes that did not flood in Harvey are flooding now,” Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick told the Beaumont Enterprise. Hurricane Harvey slammed the state in August 2017, a Category 4 beast when it made landfall in Southeast Texas. Parts of Beaumont were devastated by the killer storm.
Two years later, areas of Beaumont found themselves again submerged under more than 20 inches of rain. Jefferson County authorities warned that up to 10 more inches could fall. “The water kept rising. It kept rising. I couldn’t believe it,” said Ruby Trahan Robinson, 63, as she settled in a shelter in a town just outside Beaumont.
