The Texas cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur were watery wastelands Wednesday after they felt the wrath of Harvey.
The storm that inundated Houston swamped the cities with a record 30 inches of rainfall, unleashed flash flooding that police said claimed two lives in Beaumont and forced hundreds of residents to flee to local shelters.
For many there was no escape from the water.
Local station KJAC reported that the Robert A. Bowers Civic Center in Port Arthur was flooded. Pictures posted by the channel showed evacuees lying on cots surrounded by a sea of water. And many of those storm refugees wound up being sent to another shelter in the city.
Similar heartbreaking scenes were repeated up and down the gulf coast of the Lone Star state. Some 30,000 Texans were huddled in 230 shelters and nearly 200,000 people who lost their homes and possessions to the storm had applied for federal assistance.
FEMA Administrator Brock Long said they have 12,000 federal personnel already on the ground helping local law enforcement and first responders and they have already found temporary refuges for some 1,800 people in hotels and motels on higher ground.
But thousands more need help and Long said they are working around the clock to get everybody to safety.
“This is going to be a frustrating and painful process,” he warned.
The National Hurricane Center described the flooding in southeastern Texas as “catastrophic” and “life-threatening.”
Port Arthur Mayor Derrick Freeman warned those menaced by flooding to seek higher ground and stay out of attics to avoid being trapped by rising water. He said help was on the way.
“If you called, we are coming,” he said.
Port Arthur, the hometown of the late great rock singer Janis Joplin, and Beaumont, were pounded by rain before Harvey again made landfall again, doubling the previous record for one day of rainfall in the area, according to the Weather Channel.
“Many Texans in and around Beaumont [and] Port Arthur are fighting for their lives against an incredible amount of water,” said NBC News Meteorologist Bill Karins. “This is just as bad, if not worse, than flooding in Houston.”
The cities are around 100 miles northeast of Houston near Sabine Lake and the Neches River.
“Our whole city is underwater right now,” Freeman said in a Facebook post earlier Wednesday, as distressed residents posted addresses and phone numbers on his official page and pleaded for help.
“We’re stuck in the house, six kids, one adult mom is disabled and oldest child is on medication …water is knee high in the house and about 10 inches or less away from the wall power outlets,” one resident posted on the page.
In Beaumont, police said a toddler suffering from hypothermia was found clinging to her drowned mother in a flooded car late Tuesday. The victim’s name and that of the other fatality in the city were not released.
Appearing on TODAY, Beaumont Mayor Becky Ames warned that once the water recedes, they are likely to see “some more horrible situations, because we do know it’s pretty bad out there.”
Pictures from that city showed dozens of submerged cars — clear evidence that many people ignored warnings that the roads were not safe to drive on.
“Every single body of water” around the city of Beaumont was “at capacity and over flowing,” Ames said. “The rain is still coming down.”
And the devastation to Beaumont, Ames said, is “like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Port Arthur is home to the largest crude oil refinery in the U.S. and that operation, run by Motiva Enterprises, was shut down by the storm and the flooding, officials reported. It was not immediately clear if the facility sustained any damage or when it would be up and running again.
Kevin Roth, senior meteorologist at the Weather Channel, said the area had seen about half a year’s worth of rain in one day.
“Small creeks and small rivers and streams are the first to flood, then the other larger rivers in the area will begin to swell,” Roth added, explaining the flash flooding process.
Roth predicted that the rain would begin to taper off in the area at around sunrise as the center of Harvey shifts position.
Once a Category 4 hurricane and now a tropical storm, Harvey made landfall again early Wednesday, coming ashore in western Louisiana near the border with Texas.