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 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
Katrina is the costliest U.S hurricane, with estimated damage over $81 billion and costs over $160 billion.” The people that were affected the most was the poor people, children, the sick, and the elderly. Most of New Orleans was underwater; it was going to take a long time for the city to come back from this. “The The rescue and recovery efforts following Katrina became highly politicized, with federal, state and local officials pointing fingers at one another.” People didn’t get the proper warnings to evacuate. After the hurricane “Government officials have sought to learn from the tragedy and implement better environmental, communications and evacuation policies.” Ten years after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the city is still dealing with still trying to recover. The have lost a lot when the hurricane hit and it affected them financially, because of the popular areas that are in New Orleans. In all, almost everyone that evacuate from New Orleans fled to Houston which led to the population to grow, but also those that came to Houston had a different feeling about things. Houston has also had its fair shares has had 27 disasters- eight hurricanes, eight floods, six severe storms, three
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...
This may be a common trend in every large city if more hurricanes strike. Urban development in almost all cities in America has made flooding worse than it should be. The creation of buildings, asphalt, concrete, and other things have eliminated much of the grass in the cities, which will cause less rainwater to be absorbed into the ground. Although most major cities have rain drainage channels, Houston may not have had enough of them, which caused them to fill up with water. The water had nowhere to go except on the streets. The city of Houston avoided floodplains. The floodplains that were present in Houston were often ignored by construction companies. These companies chose to build houses on the floodplains. This is discussed in this quote by Sean Breslin, “In the months following Hurricane Harvey, Houstonians face an important decision: respect the floodplain and stop building homes wherever, or continue to ignore the lessons taught by countless flood events and build more homes in the most vulnerable areas of town” (Breslin n. pag). I feel that if the civilians and building companies in Houston would have respected the floodplains years earlier, fewer lives would have been lost in this hurricane. Coral reefs provide excellent coastline protection which slows the hurricane just before landfall. The death of coral reefs also could have played a large role in why the hurricane was so
The category 3 storm changed the lives of the residence who lived there forever. The storm in combination with the fault of the man-made flood protection walls (levee’s) resulted in the death of at least 1,300 people (1). With nearly half the victims over the age of 74, deaths were caused by; drowning, injury/ trauma and heart conditions (2). Hurricane Katrina was one of the most costliest storms to land on American soil, costing around US$135 billion in damages (3). Although the number of deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina are not as high as other natural disasters, Katrina displaced a massive amount of people from their homes, around 85% of the population were displaced directly after the storm hit (6). Being one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the United States, Hurricane Katrina impacted not only the residence of New Orleans by also many of the surrounding
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The storm was measured as a category three hurricane which had reached winds of approximately one hundred and forty miles per hour. The storm had initially measured almost four hundred miles across affecting the areas of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Of these three affected areas, Louisiana contained the largest amount of damage; however, one city in particular suffered the greatest damage and was the primary focus of this disaster. That was the city of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans was at an incredibly high risk for a few reasons. One reason was that New Orleans was surrounded by significant bodies of water. Each of these bodies of water had contained levees that were built in the twentieth century, where some were stronger than others. Those levees that were not built properly held the greatest risk of being breached and causing treacherous flooding as well. Another factor included New Orleans being located below sea level, which had included the “city’s poorest and most vulnerable pe...
There are several well-known flooding that have affected Memphis, Tennessee such as the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the 2011 Mississippi River flood, and storms that caused street flooding’s like the ones in 2008 or 2010. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was caused by extremely heavy rain which swelled the Mississippi river to its water carrying capacity. People tried to prevent the flood in Memphis by fabricating and fortifying levees to expel water from the land; although, river water began to seep through the sand bags, which were meant to keep water out. The Memphis Fire Department trucks had appeared at the breaches and pumped water back over the sand bags. Despite valiant efforts, the river overran the levees and caused massive amounts of damages and deaths, which would affect hundreds of people. Once again, substantial rainfall was the catalyst to several flooding’s in Tennessee, including the 2011 Mississippi River flooding. This flood reached over forty-eight...
People who lived in Jersey City, New York filled sandbags with sand, and they built sandbag walls against doors and around tunnels to try and keep the water out. Some even boarded up their windows to help prevent flying objects from breaking the glass. Those who kept boats along the coast moved them to places that were safer. People even cut down trees to keep them from flinging into buildings or downing power lines.
Sam Houston and the Allen brothers created a great historic city with many cultural attractions. It has hot weather, but that doesn’t stop Houstonians from enjoying their city’s many attractions.
Hurricanes are powerful and destructive storms that involve great rain and wind. The United States of America has dealt with many hurricanes that have cost a great amount of damage. However, there is one hurricane that happened in 2005 that stands out among the others, Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States, a category 5 on the Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale. An estimated 1836 people died because of the hurricane and the floodings that happened after (Zimmermann 1). Katrina initially beg...
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