Texas: Harvey's waters rise

As Harvey continues dumping rain on East Texas and the waters there continue to rise, people are starting to panic, rushing rescue boats and even shooting at them if they don't stop, said one volunteer rescuer.

Clyde Cain, of the Cajun Navy, a Louisiana-based rescue force that gained fame during Hurricane Katrina, said in one instance, a boat broke down, and while the crew sought shelter in a delivery truck, people tried to steal the inoperable boat.

"They're making it difficult for us to rescue them," he said. "You have people rushing the boat. Everyone wants to get in at the same time. They're panicking. Water is rising."

Because of the hostile responses, the Cajun Navy has been forced to halt some rescue attempts, Cain said.

"We have boats being shot at if we're not picking everybody up. We're having to pull out for a minute. We're dropping an air boat right now to go rescue a couple of our boats that broke, and they're kind of under attack," he said.

There is no indication the water will stop rising anytime soon. Swollen rivers in east Texas aren't expected to crest until later this week, and federal officials are already predicting the deadly Tropical Storm Harvey will drive 30,000 people into shelters and spur 450,000 victims to seek some sort of disaster assistance.

And yet, forecasters say, more rain is coming. Lots more.

Harris County has had "six suspected flood-related deaths" since Harvey made landfall last week, said Tricia Bentley, spokeswoman for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. The manners of death will be confirmed this week, she said. This brings the confirmed death toll to seven, which includes the previously reported deaths of a man killed in a fire in Rockport and a woman swept away in Harris County after exiting her vehicle in high water.

The average annual rainfall in Houston is 50 inches. The city has seen 25 inches of rain in two days. Another 25 could fall by Saturday.

Several locales have received 2 feet or more of rain, and forecasters say a reprieve won't arrive until week's end at the earliest. By then, rain totals could reach another 2 feet -- with isolated instances of 40 to 50 more inches -- along the upper Texas coast.

"This is a landmark event for Texas," FEMA Administrator Brock Long said. "Texas has never seen an event like this."

Long said earlier that FEMA will likely be in Texas for years, and that Harvey will require one of the largest recovery housing efforts the nation has ever seen.

Harvey will likely surpass 2008's Hurricane Ike and 2001's Tropical Storm Allison, two of the most destructive storms to hit the Gulf Coast in recent memory, he said. Millions of people from Corpus Christi to New Orleans were under flood watches and warnings Monday as Harvey's storm bands repeatedly pummeled the same areas.

Early tallies indicate at least 5,500 people have arrived at shelters in Houston and another 1,000 in Friendswood.

Several cities, including Katy, Alvin, Friendswood, League City, Pasadena, Pearland, Seabrook and Webster, have instituted curfews.

The Houston Independent School District has canceled school for the week for the district's 215,000 kids.

Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and possibly Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are scheduled to tour the Coastal Bend region Monday.

Dallas is opening a "mega-shelter" at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, but Mayor Mike Rawlings said, "We may have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of more individuals that will get bigger than this convention center."

President Donald Trump, who will visit Texas on Tuesday, approved Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' request for an emergency declaration. The governor said in his request that he believes Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jefferson Davis and Vermilion parishes will face the brunt of Harvey's winds and rain.

The President said he will also visit Louisiana on Saturday.

Energy provider CenterPoint says 96% of its Houston customers have power, but more than 104,000 are without electricity as crews experience difficulty reaching affected areas.

The NFL's Texans, MLB's Astros, and the University of Houston and University of Texas football teams as well as Louisiana State University, which has a game scheduled Saturday in Houston all have practices or games this week and are monitoring the storm before deciding if they will play.

For state and federal officials working to mitigate Harvey's devastation, one of the more frustrating aspects of the storm is uncertainty.

"The word catastrophic does not appropriately describe what we're facing," said US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. "We just don't know when it's going to end."

Early Monday, Harvey was barely clinging to tropical storm status, but the danger is far from over. The storm is forecast to head southeast toward the Matagorda Bay and Gulf of Mexico where it will pick up additional moisture before sliding back over Galveston and Houston -- cities it's already hammered.

The slow-moving nature of the storm -- it's traveled at about 3 mph, human walking speed, since Friday's landfall -- has fueled the rain and flooding. Houston's William P. Hobby Airport recorded more than a foot of rain Saturday and 11 inches of rain Sunday, the two wettest days recorded since 1930.

Even when the rain is gone, dangers will persist, said National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini, because "the flooding will be very slow to recede."

#europe