Rising floods were left by Hurricane Harvey. It was the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than 10 years. The huge storm hit southern Texas on Friday night. In the days after, it continued to rain down on cities across Texas.
The rain and rise of the sea from Hurricane Harvey caused many floods. The floods chased thousands of people to rooftops or higher ground on Sunday in Houston, Texas.
Countless Calls For Help
Rescuers like firefighters and EMTs were left trying to respond to countless desperate calls for help. Afterall, the area hit by floods was Houston. It is the fourth-largest city in the United States.
Helicopters, boats and cars meant to drive in water were all sent out to rescue people. However, flooding was everywhere.
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It was an unusual sight for Houston. The city is built on ground that is nearly flat and does not normally see flooding. Officials asked people to get on top of their homes to avoid becoming trapped in attics. They were told to wave sheets or towels to draw attention to their location.
People rode on top of inflatable beach toys, rubber rafts and even air mattresses. They swam through the rising waters to safety. Others simply waded through the water on foot. They filled plastic trash bags with their belongings to keep them dry.
Why Did People Not Escape?
Sylvester Turner is the mayor of Houston. He said he would turn the city's main convention center into a large shelter. He told drivers to stay off the roads.
"I don't need to tell anyone this is a very, very serious and unprecedented storm," Turner told news reporters. "We have several hundred structural flooding reports. We expect that number to rise pretty dramatically."
Only days ago, the mayor had told people in Houston to not leave the city. On Sunday, he defended this decision.
Turner said asking people to leave would have made the situation worse. Houston has 2.3 million people living there. It would be risky to send all those people to drive on the roads at the same time, he
The downtown was flooded because it was built on a floodplain. Back when the town of Minden was founded, there were not any laws about building houses near rivers. The houses were so close to the water that there was massive loss of and damage to property. In Minden, there is a record of flooding; there were floods in 1913, 1928, 1943, 1950, and 1983. As of 1975, the government started the Flood Damage Reduction Program (FDRP), which is a program that finds areas that are vulnerable to flooding and they prohibit building on that part of the
Hundreds of boats came together to help the city, helping in any way they could. The boat captains in the documentary explained that they never seen so many boats at one time in the same location. Each boat would take as many people that they could fit on their boat it was the largest sea evacuation in history. Five hundred thousand people were evacuated in 9 hours more that the evacuation of Dunkirk in World War II where three hundred thousand people were saved over nine
Hurricane Harvey is located in Houston, Texas. It was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Wilma in 2005, ending a record 12- years period with no major hurricanes making landfall in the country. The sprawling and soaked Houston metro area and other deluge towns in southeast Texas braced for devastating floods and pummeling rainfall on Sunday as tropical storm Harvey stalled over land and drenched dogged searchers and anxious residents. Houston, Texas has set up shelters for people to stay out of the weather with good food, clean and fresh water, and dry, clean clothes. It is getting bigger and it has been confirmed that there will be more flooding close by to that area.
Hurricane Katrina was considered as the worst hurricane in the history of United States. The winds and the rain were shattering people’s homes which collapsed and flooded. Thousands of people were suffering and dying. People were starving, and becoming dehydrated. Many people were left on the street and became homeless. After the hurricane, so many questions were left regarding the widespread damage and loss of loved ones. This devastating disaster destroyed the city of New Orleans and nearby cities and was estimated to cost $80 billion dollars in damage. State and local emergency in the affected area were struggling to perform urgent response missions such as emergency medical services, search and rescue, firefighting, giving food and water,
By August 28, evacuations were underway across the region. That day, the National Weather Service predicted that after the storm hit, “most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks…perhaps longer.” New Orleans was at particular risk. Though about half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about six feet below sea level–and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th century, the Army Corps of Engineers had built a system of levees and seawalls to keep the city from flooding. The levees along the Mississippi River were strong and sturdy, but the ones built to hold back Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne and the waterlogged swamps and marshes to the city’s east and west were much less reliable. Even before the storm, officials worried that those levees, jerry-built atop sandy, porous, erodible soil, might not withstand a massive storm surge. Neighborhoods that sat below sea level, many of which housed the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, were at great risk of
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Thousands of people watched their homes, loved ones, memories and lives be washed away with nowhere to go. The state and local officials are supposed to by law, be responsible for the management of the first response to any disaster.(Williams) Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin did not do their part. There was a plan in place, it just was not followed. "The actions and inactions of Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to apply the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city." (the heartland institution) Their lack of taking action was the cause of many peoples lives. Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. There were detailed written plans in place and they were ready to evacuate more than a million people.(heartland) The thing that bothers me the most, is that lives could...
Hurricane Harvey was one of the most devastating hurricanes to strike the United States in several years. Harvey resulted in over eighty fatalities and over 150 billion dollars in damages. This proves to be one of the most destructive hurricanes to be recorded. The overwhelming damage was caused by many different aspects; however, three of the greatest aspects are: varying weather patterns throughout the storm, the city structure of Houston, Texas, and the lack of evacuation. Each of these factors affected the city in a different way, but all resulted in a common outcome, devastation.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters to happen in the United States. The storm resulted in more then US$100 billion in damage when the cities flood protection broke and 80% of the city was flooded (1). The protection failure was not the only cause for the massive flooding, the hurricanes clockwise rotation pulled water from north of New Orleans into the city. 330,000 homes were destroyed and 400,000 people from New Orleans were displaced, along with 13,00 killed (1). Although the population quickly recovered, the rate of recovery slowed down as the years went on leading us to believe not everyone
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