Storm causes the worst flooding Houston has seen in 15 years

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Residents are evacuated from their apartment complex surrounded by floodwaters in Houston. Storms have dumped more than a foot of rain in the Houston area, flooding dozens of neighborhoods and forcing the closure of city offices and the suspension of public transit.

(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)

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Residents of the Arbor Court apartments evacuate their flooded apartment complex in The Woodlands, Texas.

(Brett Coomer / Associated Press)

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Meital Harari cleans water out of her Meyerland home in Houston. Her family rode out the storm at a nearby house because her daughter has nightmares from the Memorial Day floods.

(Jon Shapley / Associated Press)

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Emergency personnel carry a woman from a rescue boat as people are evacuated from Arbor Court Apartments in Houston.

(Melissa Phillip / Associated Press)

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Edgar Peneda, of Roadway Construction, inspects a collapsed retention wall along eastbound U.S. Highway 290 at Huffmeister after heavy rain in Houston.

(Gary Coronado / Associated Press)

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A man paddles a kayak out of high water in the Timber Lakes Timber Ridge subdivision in The Woodlands, Texas.

(Brett Coomer / Associated Press)

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Richard Lopez and Allie Hairford-Siemens hold the reins of three horses as they lead them from the back of truck through flood water along Cypress Rosehill Rd. in Cypress, Texas.

(Melissa Phillip / Associated Press)

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Residents are helped into the back of a truck as they leave their apartment complex surrounded by floodwaters in Houston. Storms have dumped more than a foot of rain in the Houston area.

(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)

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A man walks in knee-deep water in his neighborhood in The Woodlands, Texas.

(Brett Coomer / Associated Press)

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Juan Tadoro carries his son Brandon through floodwaters as they evacuate their flooded apartment complex in Houston.

(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

April 19, 2016 11:34 AM PT

Reporting from Houston — A storm that hit Houston this week caused the city’s worst flooding in 15 years and left five people dead, officials said.

More than a thousand residents of apartment complexes in the northern Greenspoint area had to flee rising floodwaters that engulfed nearby streets, floating to safety with their children in rafts fashioned from storage containers and a refrigerator.

Traffic cameras showed that two of those killed in the storm drove around barricades blocking a flooded underpass, according to Michael Walter, a spokesman for the city’s emergency operation center.

Three others were found in cars on flooded roads since the storm began late Sunday, including one in nearby Waller County, according to the local sheriff’s chief deputy, Brian Cantrell.

Houston’s Harris County Judge Ed Emmett signed an emergency declaration that more than 1,000 homes had flooded. That number was expected to grow as area bayous swelled with runoff Tuesday.

“This is the second most devastating rainfall event in this area’s history after Tropical Storm Allison” in 2001, Walter said, “based on the amount of rain that fell and where it fell.”

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Allison left 41 people dead, $5 billion in damages and about 40 inches of rain. This week’s storm dropped more than 17 inches in 24 hours in some areas.

“We need to be vigilant and concerned about ongoing rising water,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a Monday afternoon briefing, declaring a state of disaster in the nine affected counties and warning residents to avoid flooded roads in coming days.

Houston emergency crews made at least 700 high-water rescues, about double what they normally do, Walter said.

“We’ve had damage across the city,” he said, from Greenspoint to the north, down to Acres Homes and Meyerland.

Meyerland, built along a bayou, was also among the hardest-hit areas flooded during a Memorial Day storm last year, and some residents had just finished rebuilding, Mayor Sylvester Turner noted after canceling his state of the city address, closing city courts and other offices.

Turner surveyed damage, visited a shelter and distributed water in Greenspoint, where those evacuated from three flooded apartment complexes stayed first at a nearby mall, then a shelter.

“We’re going to do everything we can on the cleanup and help them put their lives back together again,” Turner said.

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Many of the area’s major highways skirt bayous that overflowed during the storm, and residents were still coping with high water Tuesday. Some schools remained closed.

“Because the watershed in the northwest and north are so slow to drain, the creeks will stay up and the water in the roadways will stay high,” said Kim Jackson, a spokeswoman for Harris County Flood Control District. “We didn’t expect the magnitude of storm that we received.”

The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch for the area through Wednesday morning.

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Twitter: @mollyhf

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