Flood-weary Houston gets more rain as crews search for the missing
WIMBERLEY, Texas -- More rain fell on Houston on Wednesday, threatening to complicate the cleanup after a long holiday weekend of storms and floods that left at least 19 people dead and more than a dozen others missing in Texas and Oklahoma.
The forecast was for 2 to 3 more inches of rain in the Houston area, a day after flooding triggered by nearly a foot of rain in a matter of hours swamped neighborhoods and highways and stranded hundreds of motorists.
Houston's emergency operations center confirmed two more deaths Wednesday in a news release, raising the combined Texas and Oklahoma death toll to 19 people.
Crews resumed the search for at least nine people missing and presumed dead after the swollen Blanco River surged through the small tourist town of Wimberley, between San Antonio and Austin. Houston Mayor Annise Parker said two people whose boat capsized during a rescue effort were also missing.
911 operators fielded nearly 2,300 calls, many of them from stranded drivers needing help from first responders, reported CBS News correspondent Vicente Arenas.
Authorities in South Texas were searching for a 73-year-old woman whose car was found in a ditch submerged in floodwater. The Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday that Alice Tovar's car was found Tuesday afternoon in the Rosenberg area, which is about 30 miles southwest of Houston.
The sheriff's office says Tovar's daughter went looking for her after a hearing that her mother's car wasn't parked at the store where she works. She found the submerged car along the route her mother takes to work, and a passing motorist used his truck to pull it from the ditch. Tovar wasn't in the car.
Tovar's daughter said her mother was possibly wearing a blue collar T-shirt with a Chevron logo and black pants, CBS affiliate KHOU reports.
Authorities, meanwhile, defended their warnings to residents ahead of the weather, which included alerts via phone and in person, but acknowledged the difficulty in reaching tourists and said a messaging system in Houston needs improvements.
"Nobody was saying, 'Get out! Get out! Get out!'" said Brenda Morton of Wimberley. She said longtime residents know the risks, but "people who were visiting or had summer homes, you have company from out of town, you don't know. You don't know when that instant is."
Morton lives three houses down from a two-story vacation home that authorities say was swept off its 10-foot pylons by a wall of water early Sunday morning with eight people inside, including three children ages 6 and 4. The house slammed into a bridge after being carried downstream on the Blanco. All eight people were missing.
Three families from Corpus Christi were staying in a Wimberley vacation home that was washed away by the floodwaters. Laura McComb, her 6-year-old son Andrew and 4-year-old daughter Leighton are among those still missing.
"She told me around 11 o'clock that water had started coming in," her sister Julie Shields said.
McComb was texting with Shields during the storm, then the phone rang.
"One o'clock in the morning she called me. She said, 'I'm in a house, I'm floating down the river. Tell Mom and Dad 'I love you' and pray," Shields said.
McComb's husband, Jonathan, survived, with a broken sternum, rib and punctured lung.
"He is absolutely devastated. He did everything he could to save them," Shields said.
Authorities in surrounding Hays County said warnings included multiple cellphone alerts and calls to landlines. Some received in-person warnings to evacuate, but officials could not say whether those in the washed-away home talked to police.
"Law enforcement made notification along that street. Whether they made contact with somebody at their residence, I can't say," Hays County Emergency Management Coordinator Kharley Smith said.
Wimberley is a popular bed-and-breakfast getaway near Austin that is surrounded by vineyards. Officials acknowledged that their electronic alerts may not reach tourists.
"Most definitely, most definitely that will certainly be part of our discussion," Hays County Commissioner Will Conley said.
In Houston, warnings from the National Weather Service buzzed on mobile phones, but city officials say they haven't installed a system that would allow them to alert residents with more targeted warnings.
The city is still working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get that system running, said Michael Walter, spokesman for Houston's Office of Emergency Management.
Floodwaters in Houston affected virtually every part of the city and paralyzed some areas. Firefighters carried out more than 500 water rescues, most involving stranded motorists. At least 2,500 vehicles were abandoned by drivers, and up to 700 Houston-area homes were damaged, officials said.
Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed in the central Texas corridor that includes Wimberley - 744 of them in San Marcos alone, said Kenneth Bell, emergency management coordinator for San Marcos.
More than 100,000 gallons of sewage spilled Tuesday from a flooded-out Houston treatment plant, officials said. They said that the spill was contained and that residents don't have to boil their water, but they shouldn't swim in areas around the plant.
The death toll stood at 15 in Texas and four in Oklahoma.
The deaths in Texas included a man whose body was pulled from the Blanco; a 14-year-old who was found with his dog in a storm drain; a high school senior who died Saturday after her car was caught in high water; and a man whose mobile home was destroyed by a reported tornado.
The forecast called for a 20 to 40 percent chance of thunderstorms through the rest of the week in Houston, and more storms were also in store for central Texas.