HOUSTON (AP) — Harvey’s floodwaters started dropping across much of the Houston area and the sun peeked through thinning clouds Wednesday in the first glimmer of hope in days for the besieged city. But the crisis was far from over, and the storm began to give up some of its dead.
The number of confirmed deaths rose to 21 after a woman’s body was discovered afloat in Beaumont. Authorities also recovered the bodies of six family members, including four children, from a van that had been swept off a Houston bridge into a murky bayou.
“Unfortunately, it seems that our worst thoughts are being realized,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said of the discovery.
While conditions in Houston appeared to improve, the disaster took a turn for the worse near the Texas-Louisiana state line.
The Texas communities of Beaumont and Port Arthur struggled with rising floodwaters and worked to evacuate residents after Harvey rolled ashore early Wednesday for the second time in six days, hitting southwestern Louisiana as a tropical storm with winds of 45 mph and heavy rain.
For much of the rest of the Houston area, forecasters said the rain is pretty much over and the water is already back within its channels in some places. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the city’s two major airports would reopen late in the afternoon.
“We have good news,” said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. “The water levels are going down. And that’s for the first time in several days.”
Nevertheless, many thousands of homes in and around the nation’s fourth-largest city were still swamped by the record-breaking deluge of 4 feet of rain and could stay that way for days or weeks. And officials said 911 call centers in the Houston area were still getting more than 1,000 calls an hour from people seeking help.
The scale of the catastrophe in Texas began to come into sharper focus: Emergency authorities said more than 1,000 homes were destroyed and close to 50,000 damaged, and over 32,000 people were in shelters across the state.
Authorities expect the death toll to rise as the waters recede and bodies are found in cars and homes. Harris County officials said they are investigating 17 deaths to determine whether they were storm-related.
The confirmed deaths from the storm include a man who tried to swim across a flooded roadway, a former football and track coach in suburban Houston and a woman who died after she and her young daughter were swept into a rain-swollen drainage canal in Beaumont. The child was rescued clinging to her dead mother, authorities said.
About 195,000 people have filed for financial assistance, and about $35 million in direct aid has been distributed — numbers expected to climb dramatically in the coming days and weeks, the chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.
“This is going to be an incredibly large disaster,” Brock Long said in Washington. “We’re not going to know the true cost for years to come. … But it’s going to be huge.”
Harvey itself was “spinning down” and expected to weaken sometime Wednesday into a tropical depression, meaning winds of 38 mph or less, National Hurricane Center meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said.
Forecasters said the remnants of the hurricane will move from Louisiana into Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky in the next few days, with flooding possible in those states.
“Once we get this thing inland during the day, it’s the end of the beginning,” Feltgen said. “Texas is going to get a chance to finally dry out as this system pulls out.”
Eugene Rideaux, a 42-year-old mechanic who showed up at evangelist Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch to sort donations for evacuees, welcomed the reprieve from the rain.
He said he had not been able to work or do much since the storm hit, so he was eager to get out of his dark house and help.
“It’s been so dark for days now, I’m just ready to see some light. Some sunshine. I’m tired of the darkness,” Rideaux said. “But it’s a tough city, and we’re going to make this into a positive and come together.”
When Harvey paid its return visit to land overnight, it hit near Cameron, Louisiana, about 45 miles from Port Arthur.
Port Arthur found itself increasingly isolated as floodwaters swamped most major roads out of the city and spilled into a storm shelter with about 100 people inside. Motiva Enterprises closed its Port Arthur refinery, the largest in the nation, because of flooding.
Port Arthur Mayor Derrick Freeman posted on his Facebook page: “city is underwater right now but we are coming!” He urged residents to move to higher ground and avoid getting trapped in attics.
Harvey initially came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane in Texas on Friday, then made a U-turn and lingered off the coast as a tropical storm for days, inundating flood-prone Houston.
Harvey’s five straight days of rain totaled close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour ever recorded in the continental United States.