Posted on 08/28/2017 10:17:35 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Houston-area officials on Monday defended the decision not to issue mandatory evacuations ahead of Harvey, which inundated the region with life-threatening floods.
Five people were dead and 14 people injured with the number expected to rise sharply as search and rescue missions continued, officials said. Fifteen to 25 inches of additional rain were expected on the Texas coast and southwestern Louisiana.
Officials released 5,000 cubic feet of water from Houston-area reservoirs Monday, hoping for relief from the storm's devastation. The plan was to increase that to 8,000 cubic feet by noon.
“If they don’t release it, it will go around and it will create even (more) of a major problem,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said. “They are indicating that if they don’t do it, and hold back the water, then it will go around and the situation would be exponentially worse.”
The additional water — on top of another round of pounding rain — could endanger thousands of homes.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, speaking Monday with NBC's "Today," said residents might have "laughed at us or ignored it" if an evacuation order had been issued.
"With a rain event over a county of 4½ million people, you don't know exactly where the rains are going to fall, you don't know exactly which neighborhoods are going to flood," Emmett said.
"If we had gone out three days before and said, 'We want 4 million people to leave Harris County,' that would have been a totally nonsensical thing to do," he added.
Additional street and home flooding was expected with controlled releases from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs.
Some 2,000 people had been rescued as of 11 a.m. in Houston, with 185 more pending, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
The local government knows what they are doing, not some hoity-toity newsperson from the East Coast.
Sorry you need to read the article.
The Mayor of Houston is a Democrat that hates President Trump.
Baloney.
Now they have a ton of people without basic services.
This Mayor can’t think beyond the ballot box.
These loud mouth big city Democrat Mayors want to opine on every Federal matter and then they don’t take care of their cities.
This guy liked to talk about immigration and global warming and maybe he should have been talking about preparing his city for floods.
I've been watching Turner since he'd been elected (I live north of Houston proper and out of his jurisdiction), and he never struck me as the type to do that. He's a local who "grew up" in the Houston political machine, and has been wanting to be mayor for a very long time. I've been impressed with his appearances during the hurricane press conferences. He seems to know what he's doing, and marshalling all the agencies at his disposal. He does not appear to be behaving like Ray Nagin.
During the storm, many local jurisdiction leaders were stopping short of mandating evacuations, saying they didn't want to put emergency responders in danger over stubborn people who refused to leave.
I've been told by long-time locals that, because Houston is so flat, the highway system was designed to become water catch-basins during severe storms. This was intentional to keep the water out of neighborhoods. This is why the roads become impassable and the city gridlocks, but the homes don't flood.
I think this is so much bigger than anyone expected. I hear people say that when Houston evacuated from Ike, people only made it as far as Conroe because the roads were stopped. It may be that it is just too impractical to evacuate a city the size of Houston in such a short period of time.
Today's situation is aggravated by the release of water in the dams. Yesterday, officials were thanking the citizen responders with flat boats, saying that today "professional" help would be arriving. However, the citizens are not stopping, and they are proving useful as their boats can get into areas where the flooding is not deep enough for many of the new vehicles that are arriving.
Now we are waiting for the water up north to flow down through Houston as it makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico.
-PJ
I’m watching a live stream. Some areas were issued evacuation orders. People got out on the roads and couldn’t find a way out and now that can’t get back to their homes either. What a mess. This is going to get much worse I fear.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3581197/posts
Dear Lester Holt and any other newscaster that feels the need to criticize our governor and/or mayors:
We are a big, big city. We have twice as many people in Houston than you have in Manhattan. We are 2200 square miles big. We are experiencing what could possibly be the worse storm in history. Our roads are flooded, our houses are under siege and there is no end in sight for the next couple of days. We don’t need you or any other liberal newscaster coming down here to try to stir things up. Evacuation decisions were made to try to keep the roads open for coastal residents who had to evacuate. With this historic flooding, Texans are bringing their boats into the city to help get fellow Texans to safety. We aren’t looking to affix blame, we are trying to survive and help one another. If you aren’t here to help, get the hell out. We don’t need your petty, snarky comments meant to sow seeds of division. We don’t operate that way down here and we don’t like people that do.
Sincerely,
The Great State of Texas and Houstonians
The mayor was probably told to not evacuate so the mediadnc could blame Trump.
“you don’t know exactly which neighborhoods are going to flood,” Emmett said”.
BS there are flood maps for all of Harris County
(former Houston resident)
Right, because the only choices were to evacuate EVERYONE or NO ONE. Not everyone was at risk of flooding, vulnerable people in low-lying areas should have been evacuated, but the democrat mayor of houston left them there to suffer...and without a doubt will end up blaming Trump for this.
I take it since the political affiliation of the mayor isn’t displayed prominently that he’s a Democrat.
No one is questioning the Governor or the mayors of other cities that made the right decision.
Only the Mayor of Houston and his staff.
Bingo!
So what. Evacuation is seriously over-rated as a hurricane strategy. It is costly, strains infrastructure beyond its capacity, and involves multiple hazards of its own. Governments love evacuation because they think it makes SAR problems go away, and exculpates them. It takes some integrity to resist this easy solution that imposes severe burdens on citizens.
I have both radios and TV's, I don't need any city, state or Fed to tell me to get out of Dodge since a hurricane is heading my way........
With as bad as Harvey as been, I’m surprised that the death toll has only been 5 - so far.
Thank you.
Those who ducked the forced evacuation in parts of State Island during Sandy either drowned or put emergency workers’ lives at incredible risk.
And this isn’t the “Free Republic of The South” board. Every day we north easterners get slammed on here. I’m from the east and I’m quite conservative and a monthly donor to FR.
Besides, I do ENOUGH bashing of Manhattan on here for everybody. :)
And it comes from first hand accounts!!
Haha!
Exactly!
I lived in Houston for ten years. Left fifteen years ago. Even then an ordinary traffic day could turn into complete city-wide gridlock under the wrong set of circumstances. You tell people to evacuate and within the hour the whole city will be in gridlock and no one will go anywhere for days.
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