Page 4
August 30, 2017
Providing Insurance and Financial Services
Home Office, Bloomington, Illinois 61710
Ernest J. Hill, Jr. Agent
4946 N. Vancouver Avenue,
Portland, OR 97217
503 286 1103 Fax 503 286 1146
ernie.hill.h5mb@statefarm.com
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Terence Keller
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Rescue boats fill a flooded Houston street helping survivors of Hurricane Harvey.
Epic Scale Disaster
C ontinued from f ront
home in the small town of Porter. But uncon-
firmed reports of others missing or presumed
dead were growing.
Six members of a family were feared dead
after their van sank into Greens Bayou in East
Houston. A Houston hotel said one of its em-
ployees disappeared while helping about 100
guests and workers evacuate the building.
Houston police confirmed that a 60-year-
old officer drowned in his patrol car after he
became trapped in high water while driving to
work. Sgt. Steve Perez had been with the force
for 34 years.
Authorities acknowledge that fatalities from
Harvey could soar once the floodwaters start to
recede from one of America’s most sprawling
metropolitan centers.
The storm continued to take a toll even as
the weather outlook improved slightly.
A pair of 70-year-old reservoir dams that
protect downtown Houston and a levee in a
suburban subdivision began overflowing Tues-
day, adding to the rising floodwaters from Har-
vey that have crippled the area after five con-
secutive days of rain that set a new continental
U.S. record for rainfall for a tropical system.
Engineers began releasing water from the
Addicks and Barker reservoirs Monday to ease
the strain on the dams. But the releases were
not enough to relieve the pressure after the re-
lentless downpours, Army Corps of Engineers
officials said. Both reservoirs are at record
highs.
The release of the water means that more
homes and streets will flood, and some homes
will be inundated for up to a month, said Jeff
Lindner of the Harris County Flood Control
District.
Officials in Houston were also keeping an
eye on infrastructure such as bridges, roads and
pipelines that are in the path of the floodwaters.
Although forecasters had feared that another
2 feet could fall in some places, it appeared that
the outlook had improved somewhat on Tues-
day. The weather service said 2 to 3 more inch-
es was expected to fall, perhaps a little less in
Houston proper, as the storm moved east.
But southeastern Texas and southwestern
Louisiana are still likely to see “relentless tor-
rential rains,” with another 6 to 12 inches of
rain across the upper Texas coast through Fri-
day as Harvey moves slowly east over the Gulf
of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said.
The disaster is unfolding on an epic scale,
with the nation’s fourth-largest city mostly par-
alyzed by the storm that arrived as a Catego-
ry 4 hurricane and then parked over the Gulf
Coast. The Houston metro area covers about
10,000 square miles, an area slightly bigger
than New Jersey.