Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner didn’t tell his citizens to evacuate…People are furious with him! Houstonians are now trapped…5 PEOPLE REPORTED DEAD…This will only get worse with devastating flooding continuing to make waters rise even higher…Gov. Abbott called for evacuations but local officials like the Houston mayor contradicted him.
“LOCAL LEADERS KNOW BEST,” Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, tweeted in response to Abbott’s warning. There were no evacuation orders in Houston, and only ones in a few communities in Harris County, Sanchez stressed.
In a follow-up tweet, Sanchez urged residents to heed the advice of local officials like Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, rather than Abbott.
Local officials know best. Houston has no evacuation order. In Harris County: very limited to select communities. LOCAL LEADERS KNOW BEST. https://t.co/DpW11lb1En
— Francisco Sanchez (@DisasterPIO) August 25, 2017
Things have gotten so bad in Houston that the the US Army Corps of Engineers has announced plans to begin releasing water into Buffalo Bayou from two flood-control dams — in the attempt to prevent uncontrollable flooding downtown and near the Houston Ship Channel.
Just horrific: Twitter is inundated with tweets from people begging for water rescues, as flood waters continue to rise across Houston. pic.twitter.com/SjFGWgQrWd
— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) August 27, 2017
15 NURSING HOME RESIDENTS EVACUATED IN DICKINSON, TX:
City authorities said Sunday night that they had rescued more than 1,000 people who had been trapped on their roofs or in their homes.
SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES RESCUE TRUCKER FROM DEEP FLOODING:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVX7YDPpCXM
Houston’s mayor on Sunday defended the decision not to evacuate the city ahead of the storm — insisting that to do so would have created an even worse “nightmare.’’
“If you think the situation right now is bad, you give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare. Especially when it’s not planned,” Mayor Sylvester Turner told ABC.
HOUSTON…WE HAVE A PROBLEM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3t9hDm34DE
The Texas Governor said it’s not the time to second guess the Houston mayor: “Now is not the time to second-guess the decisions that were made,” Abbott said. “We’re at the stage where we just need to respond to the emergencies and necessities the people of Houston have.”
The officials’ comments came as everyone from hospital patients to TV anchors and prison inmates were forced to flee the ravaged southeast part of the state.
Patients at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital were being moved to other medical facilities when water seeped into the basement, damaging its electrical system.
KHOU-TV anchorman Len Cannon was on the air Sunday morning when he spotted water coming into the station. He and his co-workers were forced into a second-floor conference room.