At least 5 people have died after massive flooding from more than a foot of rain engulfed the nation’s fourth-largest city, inundating homes and shutting down major highways, with Houston’s mayor saying there was no immediate solution.
Heavy flooding has become nearly an annual rite of passage in the practically sea-level city, where experts have long warned of the potential for catastrophe.
“I regret anyone whose home is flooded again,” said Sylvester Turner, the city’s mayor, on Monday. “There’s nothing I can say that’s going to ease your frustration. We certainly can’t control the weather.”
“A lot of rain coming in a very short period of time, there’s nothing you can do,” he added.
Flash flooding and more rain are possible Tuesday, a day after some areas saw water levels approaching 20 inches. Scores of subdivisions flooded, schools were closed, and power was knocked out to thousands of residents who were urged to shelter in place.
In addition to its location, Houston’s “gumbo” soft soil, fast-growing population and building boom that has turned empty pastures into housing developments all over the city’s suburbs and exurbs make it vulnerable to high waters, experts say.
Harris County, where Houston and many of its suburbs are located, has seen a 30 percent jump in population since 2000. Its surrounding counties have almost grown more than 10 percent since 2000, according to the Greater Houston Partnership, a business group.
Some of the resulting developments include adequate greenspace for water runoff, but not all of them do, said Philip Bedient, an engineering professor at Rice University.
“Could we have engineered our way out of this?” Bedient said. “Only if we started talking about alterations 35 or 40 years ago.”
Samuel Brody, director of the Environmental Planning & Sustainability Research Unit at Texas A&M University, last year called Houston “the No. 1 city in America to be injured and die in a flood.”
Rainstorms last year over Memorial Day weekend caused major flooding that required authorities to rescue 20 people, most of them drivers, from high water. Drivers abandoned at least 2,500 vehicles, and more than 1,000 homes were damaged in the rain.
The year before, flash flooding in Houston and suburban counties left cars trapped on major highways.
Those storms still pale in comparison to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Allison left behind $5 billion in damages and flooded parts of downtown and the Texas Medical Center, which sits near the Brays Bayou, a key watershed.
Bedient has worked with the Texas Medical Center on better preparing its facilities for massive rainfall, including the use of a sophisticated weather alert system that gives the medical center extra time to activate gates and doors that block excess rainwater.
Improving the monitoring of specific watersheds and flood-prone areas might give affected residents the extra bit of time they need to save lives and take protective measures.
“We can’t solve this flood problem in Houston,” Bedient said. “All we can do is a better job warning.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Hopefully the floods will stop soon. Up here in the northeast we get severe cold, huge blizzards and even intense humidity and heat in summer. However, far better than the frequent tornadoes and flash floods in the southwest. Nothing more frightening than a tornado..In the summer of 2014 Boston’s Suffolk County in the Revere area got an F-2 tornado. Extremely rare for a heavily urban area on the ocean. In the early 1950’s Worcester, Mass, 45 miles east of Boston got one of the worse tornado winds and dame in U.S. history. These instances are rare. The good folks of Texas and other states sometimes get dozens of tornadoes in a year.
Do those people in the flood zones have to buy flood insurance? Soon the cost of flood insurance is going to skyrocket, I think in 2018. My windstorm insurance in Key West, Florida was 12,400/yr, until I was able to install hurricane shutters and reinforce the roof, all at great expense. Still, my windstorm insurance will be over $500/mo, add that to mortgage, other insurance and taxes. Thankfully though, I am not in a flood zone..yet.
Climate change strikes again! Pretty soon you won’t be able to get flood insurance anywhere!
You do realize that earth has had floods for thousands of years. It is not climate change it is nature. Stop drinking the.kool aide.
You got that right!! They just did a 20 year study on temperature averages throughout the year(s). Do you know what the net average was over 20 years?? ZERO; i.e, no temperature (climate change) difference. So Al Gore and all his nut-job friends need to jump on a different band wagon because this one simply does not pan out!!
Just follow the money…….
you got that right. I am glad to read remarks about people not being gullible to what the government is doing to take over everything in our lives
Rex is right. The left should all just put rings in their noses…that way they can follow each other easier.
There is a weather station in Alaska that was make by a private citizen. It is near Russia. He built the station and it has a field of electric storage unites. When the Army found out that this man want to seed the clouds and help out with the areas that have not had rain for a long long yeaars. The Army found out about this station and took it over and then a year later 2 people were electrocuted when they were working the electric things. Some one in the building turned on the electric and they were electruted. No one is allowed to visit this site and if you do you will be shot and killed. Some of my friends in Alaska say they can see the site being lit up and that means the Army is doing something to the athosphere
No, its our government using HAARP weather plant to warm up the ocean and earth that caused this.. Soon they will be doing it in America so they can say it is global warming so they can stick it to us with more regulations and taking our money and getting us ready for the One World Government plan…That is what this is all about.
Scientists NOT bought off by government say there has been NO change …..we are being fooled again by our government for their agenda to control us totally. They care less about people hurt or died from their crap.. All that matter is their agenda..Whatever it takes for the end game is their Sal Salinsky plan.
it is not climate change….its the government….look up HAARP
Climate change my a$$! I work and live in Houston and have for 24 years and you just learn to cope with the hurricanes and floods. I was waiting for somebody to blame it on climate change and you are it. It is just a result of El Nino and the shifts in the jet stream that creates the highs and lows and picks up water from the gulf. This has been going on since time began and it is not going to change no matter how much money these “Climate Change” “Global Warming” fanatics manage to extort from well meaning people. Sylvester Turner, Houston’s new mayor, seems to me to be the best mayor we have had in years. The city and county are currently working a the Brays Bayou Flood control project and they really need to speed it up and finish it asap. The people in these neighborhoods are just finishing their home repairs from the last flood and are getting hit again, some of which is caused by that project not being completed. The weather in Houston is exciting to say the least but I would not want to live anywhere else.
That is not insurance–that is hy-way robbery.
We here in the Houston area have flood insurance
but next year maybe not!!!
Flood insurance will be a national issue, not just a state one. Windstorm insurance is terribly high in Florida, especially where I live in the keys. We have been forewarned that flood insurance is about to be like our windstorm. It is best to own your home and take your chances down here, but to out right own a home here is not realistic for 99.9% of the population that actually live here.
There are some insurance companies that have have quit selling home insurance and in some cases cancelled
policies for the flimsiest of reasons such as nails sticking out of siding. Fire hazard they claim. State Farm is the biggest one doing it. I know because they did it to me after having been a policy holder for 30 years.
State Farm will not insure homes in Florida.
Geez, I’m always surprised at “THE GULLIBLES”. Climate MEANS change and it’s NORMALLY cyclic over the years.
SO SICK of the SKY IS FALLING CROWD, who falls for all the GLOBAL WARMING IDIOTS. ALERT: MOST theoretical
news is FICTION–costly fiction.
its our government practicing with their HAARP weather plant to see how people will handle it.. soon it will be here too.
yes, it is man made by our government
apparantly personal knowlege is no longer acceptable as fact.
Perhaps God is sending a warning to Texas to treat its LGTB citizens with respect
God doesn’t support homosexuality. It is a sin,and God destroyed Sodom,and Gommorow because of it. God want us to follow Him in Righteousness. God is Holy,and don’t like sin. That is why Jesus Christ died on The Cross to save us from our sins. God frowns on all sin.
I think God is sending a message to our country and government in his/her way for taking so much of what we have for granted and be so greedy for the riches he has bestowed upon us.
Just to see how people will handle all this before they big stuff starts in America
“There’s nothing they can do?” How about better drainage systems, and maybe pumps to move water into underground aquifers?
Too bad these Texas folks can’t ship half of this rain to drought stricken California. But that’s nature. Sometimes Mother Nature is a real bitch.