Hurricane Harvey’s impact worsens as rainfall continues to deluge greater Houston

Last week, as read­ers know, Hur­ri­cane Har­vey roared ashore in Texas, mak­ing its first land­fall at Rock­port around 03:00 UTC. It is the first hur­ri­cane to make land­fall in the south­ern Unit­ed States in twelve years, end­ing a record stretch that began fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­canes Kat­ri­na and Wilma in 2005.

Since then, Har­vey has pum­meled Texas with rain, rain, and more rain. Hous­ton and out­ly­ing air­ports are expe­ri­enc­ing a thou­sand year flood of cat­a­stroph­ic, epic pro­por­tions. The metro area’s air­ports and sea­ports are shut down, high­ways are awash in mul­ti­ple feet of water, and homes and busi­ness­es are flood­ed, with some dwellings and com­mer­cial build­ings sub­merged prac­ti­cal­ly to their rooflines.

And the rain is still falling, adding to the state’s mis­ery. Dam­age is already in the bil­lions and may well sur­pass the records set by Kat­ri­na and Sandy.

The five costli­est Atlantic hur­ri­canes, via Wikipedia

Har­vey has been down­grad­ed to a Trop­i­cal Storm since it came ashore last week, but that’s no com­fort to the mil­lions of peo­ple grap­pling with the hav­oc it’s causing.

How unprece­dent­ed is Hurricane/Tropical Storm Har­vey? So unprece­dent­ed that the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice had to devise a new col­or scheme for their graph­ics in order to effec­tive­ly map the amount of pre­cip­i­ta­tion the Texas coast is seeing.

Take a look:

In the past, to get a sense of the destruc­tive­ness of storms like Kat­ri­na or Andrew from the air, soci­ety relied on stills and video shot by mil­i­tary heli­copters or news chop­pers. But now, due to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of drones, we’ve got far more eyes in the sky. Take a look at these videos, all cap­tured over the past two days, which pow­er­ful­ly doc­u­ment the mas­sive flood­ing that the state is experiencing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2GQPjznfb4

Here’s a roundup of mass media cov­er­age assess­ing the stor­m’s impact:

• Asso­ci­at­ed Press: Pho­to of moth­er and baby’s res­cue from Hur­ri­cane Har­vey flood­ing becomes sym­bol of storm
• KPRC 2: Har­vey’s winds increase slight­ly as it moves back into Gulf
• Hous­ton Chron­i­cle: These are the roads that are closed in Hous­ton due to Hur­ri­cane Har­vey (includes map)
• KHOU 11: Offi­cials warn of pos­si­ble uncon­trolled releas­es at Bark­er, Addicks Reser­voirs (includes video)
• ABC 13: Meet the vol­un­teer ‘Cajun Navy’ sav­ing lives in Houston
• Fox 26: Ten Har­vey-relat­ed deaths report­ed in the Hous­ton area
• Hous­ton Press: As flood­ing from Har­vey con­tin­ues, Mey­er­land res­i­dents fend for them­selves (with hi-res photos)

The lat­est watch­es and warn­ings from the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice are below:

• Flash Flood Warning
• Civ­il Emer­gency Message
• Trop­i­cal Storm Warning
• Flood Warn­ing
• Flash Flood Watch
• Storm Surge Watch
• Hur­ri­cane Local Statement
• Haz­ardous Weath­er Outlook

The present fore­cast sug­gests Har­vey will move out into the Gulf and then make land­fall again, caus­ing even more dev­as­ta­tion. It will be many days before coastal Texas gets a respite from the extreme weath­er it is experiencing.

It’s impor­tant to note that the trend of increas­ing­ly cat­a­stroph­ic storms we’re see­ing are linked to the plan­e­tary fever induced by humankind’s burn­ing of fos­sil fuels. Extreme weath­er of all kinds is one of the con­se­quences of glob­al warming.

A year ago, Al Gore came to Hous­ton to lead a Cli­mate Real­i­ty train­ing in Texas’ largest city. While there, Gore talked about Texas’ sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to extreme weath­er exac­er­bat­ed by the cli­mate cri­sis. As report­ed by the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle:

“Every storm now is dif­fer­ent because of how we’re mod­i­fy­ing the cli­mate of the Earth,” Gore said.

Warmer air can hold more water vapor and unleash in the form of what Gore called “rain bombs.” He lament­ed the lat­est flood­ing in Louisiana that’s tak­en at least 10 lives and flood­ed tens of thou­sands of homes.

He not­ed Texas has suf­fered more multi­bil­lion-dol­lar cli­mate dis­as­ters in the past 35 years than any oth­er state. Hous­ton was hit by five major floods from May 2015 through this May — two 100-year floods and one 1,000-year flood. In May 2015, he added,Texas had its raini­est month ever at “almost Noah-like” proportions.

“We have built a civ­i­liza­tion for con­di­tions that we are now in the process of rapid­ly chang­ing, and the con­se­quences are extreme,” Gore said. “These sta­tis­tics that say once in 1,000 years or once in 500 years are not accu­rate anymore.”

Empha­sis is mine. The term “thou­sand year flood” is increas­ing­ly los­ing rel­e­vance giv­en how fre­quent­ly events like Har­vey are imper­il­ing metrop­o­lis­es like Hous­ton, which is iron­i­cal­ly the fos­sil fuels cap­i­tal of the Unit­ed States (many oil and gas com­pa­nies have their head­quar­ters in the city).

Gore’s appear­ance in Hous­ton came ten years after this farce of an op-ed by Robert Bradley ran in the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle. Bradley, a right winger on the pay­roll of the fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies, accused Gore of “cli­mate alarmism” and sneered that Gore “was telling whop­pers again” despite the fact that Gore’s Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tary An Incon­ve­nient Truth accu­rate­ly pre­sent­ed the sci­en­tif­ic consensus.

It’s get­ting hard­er for shills like Bradley to deny the sci­ence of the cli­mate cri­sis, as the evi­dence of a warm­ing world is grow­ing more pro­found by the day.

Oth­er coastal cities face not only the threat of flood­ing from extreme weath­er (hur­ri­canes, rain bombs) but sea lev­el rise.

For exam­ple, Mia­mi Beach in Flori­da has already seen water in its streets just from tides. Scenes from this dis­turb­ing devel­op­ment were fea­tured in Al Gore’s new doc­u­men­tary An Incon­ve­nient Sequel, which debuted in the­aters a month ago.

How can you help vic­tims of Hur­ri­cane Har­vey? The New York Times has a good primer on which orga­ni­za­tions you can trust with your money.

Local Organizations

The Hur­ri­cane Har­vey Relief Fund of Houston’s may­or, Sylvester Turn­er, which is admin­is­tered by the Greater Hous­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Foundation.

Hous­ton Food Bank and the Food Bank of Cor­pus Christi are ask­ing for donations.

Carter Blood­Care cov­ers hos­pi­tals in north, cen­tral and east Texas. To donate, call 877–571-1000 or text DONATE4LIFE to 444–999.

To help ani­mals suf­fer­ing from the dis­as­ter, vis­it the Hous­ton Humane Soci­ety or the San Anto­nio Humane Soci­ety.

The Texas Dia­per Bank in San Anto­nio is ask­ing for dia­pers and wipes, which can be dropped off in per­son or mailed to 5415 Ban­dera Road, Suite 504, San Anto­nio, Tex., 78238.

For more options, the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency rec­om­mends check­ing with the Nation­al Vol­un­tary Orga­ni­za­tions Active in Dis­as­ter for a list of trust­ed dis­as­ter-relief orga­ni­za­tions in Texas.

We’re stronger togeth­er — let’s do what we can to help Tex­ans with­stand Harvey!