Imelda slams southeast Texas, bringing flash floods and mandatory evacuations
ANAHUAC, Texas — Tropical Depression Imelda brought driving rains to Louisiana and southeast Texas on Thursday, prompting evacuations and inundating many of the same communities ravaged by Hurricane Harvey two years ago.
As much as 40 inches of rain could fall in the region on Thursday and Friday, as “significant and life threatening flash flooding is ongoing across portions of far southeast Texas,” according to an advisory from the National Hurricane Center.
At 11 a.m. local time Thursday, the National Weather Service in Houston bluntly told people in the region to stay home and indoors.
“This remains a very dangerous flash flooding situation for North Central Harris County,” the agency said.
And all bus and rail service has been shut down in Houston, Texas’ biggest city and the fourth largest in America, the area’s public transportation agency announced.
Sept. 19, 201902:04
Both of Houston’s airports were affected by extreme rain.
Hobby Airport announced shortly after noon that departing flights would be allowed to take off, but arrivals are being turned away. George Bush Intercontinental Airport issued a full ground stop late in the morning, and before resuming flights with significant delays.
Flood waters forced the hasty evacuation Thursday of Riceland Medical Center in Winnie, about 60 miles east of downtown Houston.
“It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it. Right now I’m in an absolute deluge of rain,” Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said Thursday morning, as he took cover under a carport at an auto dealership.
Cars drive through a flooded street in Sargent, Texas, on Sept. 18, 2019.Mark Mulligan / Houston Chronicle via AP
“Right now, as a Texas sheriff, the only thing that I really want is for people to pray that it will quit raining.”
He added that the town “looks like a lake.”
James Revia, a 40-year-old resident of the Chambers County community of Hankamer, and his four children were rescued from their flooded trailer park home by a passing fire truck.
Revia, who owns a lawn service and is a mobile DJ, fears all of his music equipment, kept inside his truck, has been lost to floods.
“This storm grew into a tropical depression within four hours, it caught everyone by surprise,” he said.
In Beaumont, about 85 miles northeast of Houston, flood waters are going above and beyond what Hurricane Harvey did in August 2017, officials said.
“It’s bad,” Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick said. “Homes that did not flood in Harvey are flooding now.”
By midday, a rain gauge just outside of Beaumont is reporting a two-day rainfall total now over 38 inches, with 34 inches coming down in the last 24 hours.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday declared a state of emergency in counties suffering from the heavy rains and floods: Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Hardin, Harris, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Newton, Orange and San Jacinto.
Annie Rose Ramos reported from Anahuac, David K. Li reported from New York.
Kathryn Prociv contributed.
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