Death toll of storm rises to 25; Houston area inundated as thousands stranded

Tropical Storm Harvey spun across southeastern Texas into Louisiana on Wednesday, sending more people fleeing for shelter after swamping Houston with record rains and flooding that killed at least 25 and drove tens of thousands from their homes.

The slow-moving storm has forced 32,000 people to seek shelter since coming ashore on Aug 25 near Corpus Christi, Texas, as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than half a century. On Wednesday, it pummeled a stretch of coast from Port Arthur, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Among the latest deaths reported were two people who drowned while driving through high water near Simonton, Texas, 40 miles west of Houston, Major Chad Norvell of the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter.

Houston's KHOU-TV reported that an infant girl was swept away by floodwaters as her parents were driving from Houston toward Louisiana on Highway 150. Police in Harris County, home to Houston, said 17 people remained missing.

Busloads of people fleeing floodwaters around Port Arthur arrived in Lake Charles, joining local residents who had already packed into shelters to escape waterlogged homes.

Harvey was forecast to drop a further 3 to 6 inches of rain on Wednesday, with a storm surge of up to four feet along the western part of Louisiana's Gulf Coast. The floods shut the nation's largest oil refinery in Port Arthur in the latest hit to US energy infrastructure that has sent gasoline prices climbing and disrupted global fuel supplies.

Moody's Analytics is estimating the economic cost from Harvey for southeast Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion, ranking it among the costliest storms in US history.

"The worst is not yet over for southeast Texas as far as the rain is concerned," Governor Greg Abbott said.

He warned residents of storm-hit areas to expect floodwaters to linger for up to a week and said the area affected was larger than that hit by 2005's Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people in New Orleans, and 2012's Superstorm Sandy, which killed 132 around New York and New Jersey.

The population of Houston's metropolitan area is about 6.5 million, far greater than New Orleans' at the time of Katrina. Abbott asked that the federal government spend more on rebuilding Texas' Gulf Coast than it did after the earlier storms.

Reuters

(China Daily USA 08/31/2017 page2)