Special Reports & Tweets - Boaters Rescue Stranded Houston Residents From Flood Waters
Aired: 2017-08-27
Duration: 03:48


=== Flood Waters Rescuing Stranded Residents (03:41) ===

[00:00:00]  This is Michael Zimmerman for InfoWords.com.
[00:00:03]  We're here.
[00:00:03]  This is post-Oklane.
[00:00:05]  Here's Interstate 610 in Houston, Texas.
[00:00:08]  So you can see there's people launching boats here.
[00:00:11]  And there's actually some boats coming right back in now.
[00:00:14]  Full of people that they've rescued.
[00:00:17]  Individuals are launching their own boats to go and save people because there's just far too many people trapped.
[00:00:22]  The National Guard and the local...
[00:00:26]  Rescue teams cannot possibly pick up all of them, so they've put out a call for individuals to come out and help rescue people, help with these rescue efforts.
[00:00:34]  So you see here they're now launching a jet ski, some fishing boats, and they're just adding more and more boats to the water to go out and rescue people here in the Post Oak area.
[00:00:45]  This is happening all over Houston, though, as the flood waters continue to rise and trap people in their homes.
[00:00:51]  As you can see, the light poles here, there's probably at least 10 feet of water in this intersection, just based on the height of those above the water.
[00:00:59]  So this is very deep water, and there's lots of homes over in this area here that people are trapped inside of.
[00:01:05]  And the freeway here is entirely shut down.
[00:01:08]  We'll walk over this way.
[00:01:09]  There's actually an 18-wheeler that got stuck in the water.
[00:01:15]  And there's certain roads here that are accessible, but for the most part...
[00:01:19]  Houston is just completely locked down.
[00:01:21]  You can actually see water bubbling up from the ground with how saturated everything is here.
[00:01:27]  There's nowhere for the water to go, so all this surface water is just pulling up, going feet deep.
[00:01:36]  This is Interstate 610 over here.
[00:01:39]  You can see lots of emergency vehicles.
[00:01:43]  And there's an 18-wheeler in the distance.
[00:01:45]  We'll get over to it.
[00:01:51]  But everywhere I've gone here just continues to get worse as we go further into the city.
[00:01:58]  Houston and the Gulf Coast was expected to get up to 30 inches of rain in this area.
[00:02:10]  Around three feet of water.
[00:02:13]  And Houston is largely a concrete jungle.
[00:02:16]  Lots of roads everywhere.
[00:02:19]  Here's the 18-wheeler behind me.
[00:02:21]  Not going to be able to make it through.
[00:02:51]  And I grew up in the Houston area.
[00:02:52]  I've seen a number of these floods and storms before that cause massive flooding.
[00:02:57]  This is by far the worst that I've seen in just talking to people in the Houston area who have lived here their whole lives.
[00:03:02]  They say this is absolutely worse than different hurricanes or tropical storms that have previously flooded the area.
[00:03:10]  And we may even see snakes or all kinds of wildlife that lives in woods like this.
[00:03:17]  You'll see it on the surface.
[00:03:19]  But also sewers end up bubbling up and the water ends up being very contaminated with sewage.
[00:03:26]  So you can see here in the distance that 18 wheel air flooded out.

=== Keep Bringing Reports (00:20) ===

[00:03:40]  And deep floodwaters here.
[00:03:46]  We keep bringing you more reports.