Residents ordered to evacuate as East Texas faces heavy rain, floods

TEXAS – Mandatory evacuations were under way in parts of South-east Texas on the evening of May 2 after heavy rain continued to unleash major flooding, adding to a deluge in an area that had received up to 30cm of rain on April 28.

Officials issued a disaster declaration in Harris County, where the San Jacinto River on the outskirts of Houston was swelling to levels that could keep people stranded for days, according to the county government.

Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s chief leader, urged people in several neighbourhoods near the east fork of the river to evacuate before nightfall.

In a statement, Ms Hidalgo said: “What we’re going to see tonight and into the weekend will not be Hurricane Harvey”. She was referring to the storm that caused devastation in 2017. “But we’re going to see significant impacts.”

Earlier in the day, crews had rescued eight people and 30 animals in high-water areas, according to Ms Hidalgo.

Images from news outlets showed widespread flooding in streets and stranded cars.

Forecasters expected more rain – between 5cm and 7.6cm per hour – to drench the area in the afternoon and evening of May 2, and into the next morning. The additional heavy rainfall could lead to more widespread flooding.

A flood watch was in effect for the region till May 3, according to the National Weather Service office in Houston.

On May 3, a meteorologist with the weather service in Houston, Ms Hayley Adams, said about 20.3cm to 25.4cm of rain fell in the past 24 hours in Livingston, which is in Polk County and north-east of Houston.

“We have had several reports of numerous flooded roads in that area and multiple high-water rescues,” she said. “Roads are impassable.”

Ms Adams said more rain, between 5cm and 10.2cm, was expected in the area on the evening of May 2 and into the next morning.

The storm came days after an earlier round of rainfall and flooding prompted officials in Polk County, home to about 50,000 people, to issue a mandatory evacuation order on April 29.

“Roads are flooding faster than we can post,” the Polk County Office of Emergency Management said in a Facebook post on May 2.

The agency issued a boil water notice for some subdivisions on May 2.

Officials in Montgomery County, north of Houston, issued a voluntary evacuation order for some neighbourhoods near the western fork of the San Jacinto River.

In posts on the Polk County Office of Emergency Management’s Facebook page, officials provided updates on the Trinity River Authority’s planned increased discharge from the Lake Livingston Dam into the area, which could worsen flooding and cause a risk to infrastructure.

On the afternoon of May 2, the authority assured residents that the dam’s integrity was not at risk.

The Houston Office of Emergency Management said that day that the city’s fire, police and public works departments had high-water vehicles on standby for the communities of Kingwood and North Houston, which were also under a flood watch.

The Houston Police Department said it was closing Lake Houston because of the expected heavy rainfall.

Aerial drone footage, shared on social media by the Polk County Office of Emergency Management, showed homes and businesses swallowed by muddy flood waters, and trucks and cars swept away.

“All roadways in Polk County are compromised,” the agency said that morning. The Texas Department of Transportation also closed a bridge over the Trinity River.

One video posted on the social platform X showed a tractor-trailer in Polk County slowly submerging under a flooded patch of highway as the driver climbed to the vehicle’s roof, waiting for rescue.

Offices and schools in the county were closed on May 2 and were to remain so the next day. At least one shelter was open at a gym in Livingston. NYTIMES