Flooding in Texas forces evacuations
And we don’t know what what it’s going to be like when we get back in there. So and if it’s the house is gone, where do we go? Evacuations are underway in parts of Texas after rivers surged to Hurricane Harvey levels. Crews rescued more than 400 people from homes, rooftops and roads engulfed in murky water. Officials say residents who don’t evacuate must be prepared to stay in place for several days. What we need folks to do here is you’ve got two options. Either we need you to plan to stay in place for two to three days or, or if you can’t do that, we need you to leave. According to the National Weather Service, rainfall totals reached nearly 2 feet of rain in five days. Some communities north of Houston picked up nearly two months worth of rain on Thursday, causing rivers to rise to levels not seen since the devastating floods of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. We are about to see the river at 78 feet above sea level. Disaster declarations are active for over a third of Texas counties after Governor Greg Abbott expanded the storm related declarations in response to the flooding. Some homes along the banks of the swollen Sanyoncito River are now only accessible by boat. I’d probably say this came up over foot, putting 1/2 in an hour. I wasn’t that worried about it at 1st until until today. This week’s storms were just the latest in a series of weather events that have pounded the state since early April. Dozens of tornadoes have hit the Panhandle to the Gulf Coast. Some areas of the state have been pounded with softball sized hail. Flood watches remain in effect for millions of people across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. As forecasters predict additional rainfall on Saturday night, the heaviest downpours in Central Texas will occur upstream of the flooding in Houston, where 12 river gauges have reached major flood stage for City News on Brandon Rowe.