HOUSTON (AP) — The Texas Department of Public Safety says more than 48,700 homes have been affected by flooding and other damage brought by Harvey since it first came ashore Friday.
A report released Wednesday shows more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed while about another 17,000 have sustained major damage. Approximately 32,000 have damage described by state authorities as minor.
In Harris County, one of the state’s largest and home to Houston, about 43,700 homes have been damaged, with some 11,600 receiving major damage and another 770 destroyed.
Harvey has also damaged nearly 700 businesses in the state.
DPS says its report will be updated each day so the number of damaged structures is expected to rise, particularly with expanding floodwaters in Southeast Texas as Harvey moves into Louisiana.
In other developments:
2:25 p.m.
Some motorists have been stranded along Interstate 10 in southeast Texas for nearly 24 hours after they pulled off the freeway but couldn’t re-enter.
More than two dozen vehicles, including a TV news crew’s, remained clustered Wednesday afternoon around a closed convenience store in Orange, Texas.
I-10 is elevated and passable between Orange and Lake Charles, Louisiana, about 35 miles to the east. But many on- and off-ramps are too flooded from Harvey’s rains to allow vehicles to pass.
2:20 p.m.
About 10,000 additional National Guard troops from around the U.S. are being deployed to Texas as Harvey continues dumping rain on the region.
Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that “the worst is not over” for southeastern Texas as widespread flooding continues.
The Republican says the arrival of additional Guard members from around the country will bring the total number of deployments to about 24,000. Abbott earlier this week activated all available members of the Texas National Guard.
Abbott says the Guard has conducted more than 8,500 rescues and more than 1,400 shelter-in-place and welfare checks.
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2 p.m.
A woman whose body was found floating in floodwaters near a residential area in southeast Texas is believed to be at least the 21st person to have died in Harvey’s path.
Beaumont police say the woman’s body was discovered Wednesday morning. Authorities have not released her name and are not certain of the circumstances that led to her death.
The woman is the second person to have died in Beaumont this week.
Authorities found a shivering 3-year-old clinging to the body of her drowned mother in a rain-swollen canal Tuesday after the woman tried to carry her child to safety.
Beaumont police on Wednesday identified the mother as 41-year-old Colette Sulcer and said her daughter was being treated for hypothermia but doing well.
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1:45 p.m.
Forecasters are looking at a weather system off the Mexican coast just south of Texas that they say has a one-in-five chance of developing into something tropical in the next five days.
Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, says if it does develop, it would do so slowly and that it shouldn’t be seen as an imminent threat. He says it wouldn’t necessarily hit Harvey-flooded areas, but there’s a chance.
The system is so far out that forecasters can’t say how much more rain it would bring.
Hurricane Harvey has weakened to a minimal tropical storm, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, down from 45 mph. Warnings and watches have been dropped for nearly all of Texas, except Sabine Pass.
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1:40 p.m.
A 36-year-old inmate scheduled for execution in Texas next week has been granted a temporary reprieve because of Harvey.
Bexar County prosecutors cited “extraordinary circumstances” in asking to move Juan Castillo’s execution to Dec. 14 because some of his legal team is based in Harris County, which has been slammed by the tropical storm. On Wednesday, a state judge agreed.
Gov. Greg Abbott has designated Harris County — which includes Houston — a disaster area along with dozens of other Texas counties after the tropical storm submerged Southeast Texas with torrential rain.
Castillo had been scheduled for lethal injection Sept. 7 in Huntsville for the slaying of 19-year-old Tommy Garcia Jr. during a 2003 robbery in San Antonio.
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1:35 p.m.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards says the threat of flooding in the state’s southwest appears to be diminishing as Harvey pulls away from the region.
He says Louisiana remains committed to assisting officials in Texas, where another overnight round of torrential rains stranded many residents in flooded homes.
Edwards says 330 people were staying at a Lake Charles shelter as of Wednesday afternoon. He expects that number to grow as more people are rescued from floodwaters in eastern Texas, just across the state line.
He says a shelter in Shreveport is ready to accommodate up to 3,400 flood victims from Texas if officials accept the state’s offer to shelter them in northern Louisiana.
Edwards planned to travel to southwest Louisiana on Wednesday afternoon to meet with local officials there.
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1:10 p.m.
Residents along the Texas-Louisiana border are feeling Harvey’s second punch as flash flooding inundates homes and overwhelms first responders trying to pluck people from the water.
Police in Beaumont, Texas, have been recruiting anyone people with boats Wednesday to help check neighborhoods for potential rescues. Police said many were not calling 911, instead calling for help on social media, adding to the chaos.
Twenty-five miles west in Orange, Texas, Anna McKay says she tried calling 911 for help, but nobody answered. Neighbors helped bring her and 12 other people who had sought refuge at her home to dry ground. They gathered at a Baptist church where people were planning to cook food to offer comfort.
Harvey made its second landfall Wednesday as a tropical storm after roaring ashore last week as a hurricane.
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1 p.m.
Downtown Houston business district officials say the city’s center has survived Harvey in relatively good shape, though flooding has damaged several buildings, including City Hall and the city’s main performing arts centers.
Officials said Wednesday that flooding damaged the ground floor or basements of more than two dozen buildings or businesses downtown, primarily along Buffalo Bayou, a river-like waterway that meanders west to east through the city.
Among the damaged buildings are the Alley Theatre, Wortham Theater Center, Hobby Center and Jones Hall, home of the Houston Symphony.
Streets to and within downtown are open, although some freeway exit ramps leading into downtown remain impassable. There are some scattered power outages and some traffic signals are out.
There is isolated flooding in the pedestrian tunnels what wind through downtown.
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12:50 p.m.
The federal Department of Education is easing financial aid rules and procedures for those affected by Harvey.
The department is encouraging students whose financial needs have been altered by the storm to contact their school’s financial aid office. The agency says in a statement that colleges and career schools will be allowed to use “professional judgment” to adjust a student’s financial information in the aftermath of Harvey.
A school may even be able to waive certain paperwork requirements if documents were destroyed in the flooding.
The department says borrowers struggling to pay off loans because of Harvey should inform their loan servicers — and they’ve been directed to give borrowers flexibility in managing loan payments.
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12:45 p.m.
All students in the largest district in Texas will be eligible to receive three free meals per day at school as the state recovers from Harvey.
The Houston Independent School District on Wednesday announced the plan promising free meals on campus to 216,000 students during the 2017-2018 school year.
An HISD statement says federal and state agriculture departments have waived the usual required application process, part of the National School Lunch/Breakfast Program, to help with Harvey recovery.
Superintendent Richard Carranza says the waiver will give families one less concern as they begin the process of restoring their lives.
Thousands of people have been forced from their homes in Houston since Harvey struck, submerging the city with torrential rain.
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12:40 p.m.
There are more than 32,000 people in shelters across Texas as Harvey continues drenching the state’s Gulf Coast.
Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas also has an additional 30,000 beds “available as needed” for those who fled or are still fleeing floodwaters associated with the storm.
At a news conference in Austin, Abbott said there are still about 107,000 power outages statewide, down from nearly 140,000 over the weekend. Harvey roared ashore as a hurricane Friday, then triggered deadly floods as a tropical storm.
Abbott refused to speculate on the final costs of the storm in terms of property damage. But he suggested that the scope of destruction far exceeded that of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, meaning the financial impact will likely be far greater than both.
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12:25 p.m.
Officers have located a submerged van in which six members of a Houston family were traveling when it was swept off a Houston bridge and into a storm-ravaged bayou.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says the van is in about 10 feet (3 meters) of muddy water in Green’s Bayou in northeast Houston. He says the bodies of two adults can be seen in the front seat but that if the four children’s bodies are inside they are obscured because of the water conditions and the angle of the vehicle.
Authorities are trying to decide whether dive team members will retrieve the bodies or if it would be safer to pull the van from the treacherous water first.
Samuel Saldivar told deputies he was in his brother’s van rescuing his parents and relatives from their flooded home Sunday when the van was tossed by a strong current into the bayou as it crossed a bridge. He escaped through a window but the others were trapped.
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12:05 p.m.
Authorities say a 3-year-old girl who was found clinging to the body of her drowned mother in a rain-swollen canal in Southeast Texas is doing well and should be released from the hospital soon.
Beaumont police on Wednesday identified the girl’s mother as 41-year-old Colette Sulcer.
Officer Carol Riley says the toddler, who was suffering from hypothermia when she was rescued Tuesday afternoon, has now been reunited with her family. Riley says the girl is in stable condition and should be released from the hospital on Wednesday.
Authorities have said the mother’s vehicle got stuck in a flooded parking lot of an office park just off Interstate 10. A witness saw the woman take her daughter and try to walk to safety when the swift current of a flooded drainage canal next to the parking lot swept them both away.
Officials say the child was holding onto the floating woman when police and fire-rescue team in a boat caught up to them a half-mile downstream.
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11:45 a.m.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it has assigned about 150 employees from around the country to help with disaster relief efforts in Houston.
The agency said Wednesday that 139 agents and officers from Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Washington, New York, San Diego and Tampa are on scene. They are on 25-member teams that answer to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
ICE also has another dozen employees on another team that assists FEMA. It says it is prepared to send more employees if needed.
The agency says it is not doing immigration enforcement operations in storm-affected areas.
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11:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Harvey, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the president’s border wall.
The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account is part of a spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when Congress returns from its August recess. The $876 million cut, part of the 1,305-page measure’s homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump’s down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week. The optics are politically bad and there’s only $2.3 billion remaining in disaster coffers.
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11:20 a.m.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it’s not conducting immigration enforcement operations in storm-affected areas.
The agency’s statement Wednesday came in response to reports a day earlier that impersonators were knocking on doors in Houston and identifying themselves as Homeland Security Investigations agents. ICE says the impersonators are reportedly telling people to evacuate, presumably with the intention of robbing their empty homes.
ICE is encouraging people to demand to see badges and credentials. The agency has sent employees to help with search-and-rescue operations.
The latest statement is more explicit than one issued earlier this week and perhaps more reassuring to people in the country illegally. On Monday, ICE said it won’t conduct “routine, non-criminal immigration enforcement operations” at evacuation sites and shelters, but that the law will not be suspended.
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11:05 a.m.
Venezuela says it will offer aid to victims of Harvey through the U.S. subsidiary of its state oil company.
Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza announced Wednesday that President Nicolas Maduro had ordered Venezuelan officials to develop a plan to help those affected by the storm.
Arreaza says that Citgo will provide up to $5 million in heating products to people in Houston and that when someone fills up their tank at a Citgo, station “they will be supporting the recovery.”
Harvey hit Southeast Texas last week as a Category 4 hurricane and has since downgraded to a tropical storm.
The gesture follows the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s government that prohibit banks from providing it with new financing. Citgo is also restricted from sending dividends back to Venezuela. The sanctions were imposed because of the country’s creation of a government-loaded constitutional assembly that overrides the opposition-dominated congress.
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10:50 a.m.
The National Hurricane Center says Harvey should soon slow to a tropical depression.
Meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said Wednesday that Harvey is “spinning down,” and while it is still a tropical storm with 45 mph (72 kph) winds, “it should be a depression sometime tonight.”
A depression has maximum sustained surface winds of 38 mph (61 kph) or less.
Feltgen says Beaumont, Texas, and Cameron, Louisiana, are “still under the gun” for rain from Harvey, and conditions won’t improve until Wednesday night.
The storm is forecast to then move from Louisiana into northwestern Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky.
The National Weather Service is predicting 5 to 6 inches (13 to 15 centimeters) of rain in western Tennessee. Flood watches and warnings have been issued for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.
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10:45 a.m.
Houston City Council is holding its weekly meeting at a shelter for people displaced by Harvey because city hall is flooded.
Mayor Sylvester Turner opened the meeting Wednesday at the George R. Brown Convention Center by thanking Houston’s first responders, prompting a standing ovation from council members and observers.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told the meeting that his officers and other first responders continue to work, despite personal hardships including their own flooded homes.
The convention center has become a temporary home for more than 10,000 people since Friday, when Harvey struck the Southeast Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane. Harvey has since weakened to a tropical storm.
City hall is closed because torrential rain flooded its basement and the bottom floor of an annex building, knocking out power.
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10:25 a.m.
Three Carnival Cruise Line ships that are based in Galveston but detoured to New Orleans to wait out Harvey could soon be back in storm-battered Texas.
The ships, carrying more than 15,000 passengers and crew, were scheduled to return to Galveston last weekend but changed course when Harvey slammed into Southeast Texas as a Category 4 hurricane. Harvey has since weakened to a tropical storm that has dumped more than 50 inches (127 centimeters) of rain in parts of Southeast Texas.
Carnival spokeswoman Christine de la Huerta says the Carnival Freedom and the Carnival Valor were departing Wednesday from New Orleans as preparations continue to reopen the Port of Galveston. She says the Carnival Breeze left New Orleans on Tuesday.
Miami-based Carnival, its parent company Carnival Corporation and the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation, are donating $2 million to Harvey relief efforts. Mickey Arison is Carnival’s chairman.
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10:15 a.m.
Harris County flood control officials are concerned that a levee could fail in a suburban Houston subdivision in the north of the county, thus adding to the Harvey-related floods.
Spokesman Jeff Lindner says if the weakened section of levee along Cypress Creek in Inverness Forest is breached, water is going to rise “very quickly and very fast, and it is going to be deep.”
He says the water could reach the rooftops of homes immediately in the levee area. The area is under a mandatory evacuation order due to Harvey, but some residents have remained.
Lindner says county authorities are working with several agencies to figure out how to increase pressure on the outside of the levee to compensate for the tremendous pressure inside due to record amounts of water.
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10 a.m.
A sheriff’s official north of Houston says two men died this week in separate drownings, bringing the number of confirmed Harvey-related deaths to 20.
Montgomery County sheriff’s Capt. Bryan Carlisle said Wednesday that 33-year-old Joshua Feuerstein of Conroe died when he disregarded a barricade and drove his pickup into standing water Monday.
Carlisle says witnesses saw the pickup’s reverse lights illuminate, indicating that Feuerstein was attempting to back out of the water. But the pickup was carried into deeper water. The witnesses swam to help, but Carlisle says he was already dead.
Separately, an unidentified man died as he tried to swim across a flooded roadway Monday.
Carlisle says people nearby saw the man sink under the fast-moving water. His body was found a day later in the same area.
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9:50 a.m.
Joel Osteen is defending the decision not to open his Houston megachurch as a shelter during the initial flooding from Harvey in the face of withering criticism on social media.
The televangelist maintained on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday that his Lakewood Church was inaccessible due to floodwaters during the early part of the storm. He says the 16,000-seat former basketball arena is prone to flooding and “the last thing we would do is put people in it right at the beginning.” He says the city didn’t ask the church to open as a shelter initially.
Osteen tells NBC’s “Today” show that a “false narrative” on social media was to blame for the backlash.
Lakewood Church began taking in Harvey evacuees Tuesday afternoon.