Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Fires and two explosions rocked a flooded Houston-area chemical plant early Thursday, sending up a plume that federal authorities described as "incredibly dangerous" and adding a potential new hazard to the aftermath of Harvey. The blasts at the Arkema Inc. plant, about 25 miles northeast of Houston, also ignited a 30- to 40-foot flame.
In honor of fellow Houstonians, fellow Texans and now our neighbors to the east in Louisiana, who have been impacted by Hurricane Harvey, I continue my weather themed week by considering how Shakespeare used weather as a metaphor and what the compliance practitioner can learn from this going forward. It occurred to me that if weather is a metaphor in fiction, it is based on some reality which I think can be used to instruct on a best practices compliance program.
Flooding in Houston coupled with Tropical Storm Harvey's outer rain bands heading east had emotions running high in New Orleans, especially among those whose homes flooded during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says he won't second-guess the decision not to ask Houston residents to evacuate before Harvey hit the city with heavy rain and wind.
The Times-Picayune is marking the tricentennial of New Orleans with its ongoing 300 for 300 project, running through 2018 and highlighting the moments and people that connect and inspire us. Today, the series continues with the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Public schools are grappling with the names, images of Confederate icons in the wake of the deaths at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over a Robert E. Lee statue. After five days of torrential rain, the latest weather forecast predicts less than an inch of rain and perhaps even sunshine for the Houston area.
The National Hurricane Center says Harvey is drifting "erratically" back toward the Gulf Coast after having moved inland since making landfall late Friday. An advisory Monday afternoon from the center says life-threatening flooding continues for Houston and the broader southeastern Texas region.
The Valero Houston Refinery is threatened by the swelling waters of the Buffalo Bayou after Hurricane Harvey inundated the Texas Gulf coast with rain, in Houston, Aug. 27, 2017. Gasoline prices have been rising and oil costs have been changing as Hurricane Harvey's winds and rising floodwaters slam into a part of Texas that has a significant portion of the nation's oil industry, particularly oil refineries, shipping, and production.
The full extent of Hurricane Harvey's aftermath started to come into chilling focus Sunday in Houston and across much of Central Texas, as rain measured in feet, not inches, overwhelmed lakes, rivers and bayous, leaving several people dead and thousands displaced in a weather disaster described as "beyond anything experienced." Across the nation's fourth-largest city and suburbs many miles away, families scrambled to get out of their fast-flooding homes.
As people waded in chest-high floodwaters in the United States' fourth-largest city, Houston's mayor announced Sunday that the main convention center would be opening as a shelter, evoking memories of Hurricane Katrina, when breached levees in New Orleans stranded tens of thousands of people in squalid conditions at the football stadium and convention center. Elected officials have vowed to heed the lessons from Katrina in 2005, when about 30,000 evacuees spent days packed inside the sweltering Superdome without electricity or running water.
Two kayakers try to beat the current of an overflowing Brays Bayou in Houston. Rescuers answered hundreds of calls for help as floodwaters from the remnants of Hurricane Harvey began to fill second-story homes.
Harvey made landfall Friday near Corpus Christi, Texas, as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing 130 mph sustained winds and driving rains. Harvey weakened to a tropical storm Saturday, but fear of flooding that could be brought on by torrential rains remains.
The U.S. Coast Guard has stationed rescue boats and planes at several locations around parts of Southeast Texas affected by Tropical Storm Harvey. The Coast Guard's Houston-Galveston sector protects the coastline near the nation's fourth-largest city, a region home to a critical port and major oil refineries.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Saturday a disaster declaration has been declared for 50 of the state's 254 counties in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, noting that the foremost concern at this time will be heavy rainfall that will result in "catastrophic, life-threatening" flooding. "I have issued a disaster declaration that originally included 30 counties," Abbott said during a press conference in Austin Saturday afternoon.
Late Friday, Hurricane Harvey intensified to a major Category 4 hurricane just before making landfall near Rockport, Texas and remains a dangerous storm. The priorities right now are supporting states with: search and rescue, mass care, disaster medical services, temporary power, and life sustaining commodities " says FEMA Administrator Brock Long.
The rain was so torrential along Interstate 45 coming out of Galveston as Hurricane Harvey settled over southeast Texas that motorists had to stop under bridges to avoid driving in whiteout conditions. The downpour on Saturday has also caused minor street flooding along a highway in Dickinson, about 25 miles northwest of Galveston.
Homeland security adviser Tom Bossert briefed reporters on the federal government's preparations for Hurricane Harvey, a "serious storm" which, he said, "could remain a dangerous storm for several days." with winds of 120 miles per hour, is expected to bring flooding, flash flooding and other high-wind damage, Bossert said, although he added that this was expected "to be a rain event more so than a wind event."
Conditions were deteriorating along Texas's Gulf Coast on Friday as Hurricane Harvey strengthened and slowly moved toward the state, with forecasters warning that evacuations and preparations "should be rushed to completion." Millions of people were bracing for a prolonged battering from the hurricane, which could be the fiercest such storm to hit the U.S. in nearly a dozen years.
An early survey of the pass and bay was made between January and March 1871, and seven years later Congress appropriated $6,000 to remove a wrecked French vessel from the pass.
Rain bands reeling away from Tropical Depression Cindy spread drenching rains from the Southeast to the Midwest, triggering flash flood warnings over several states including West Virginia, whose residents on Friday marked the anniversary of deadly floods last June.
Tropical storms have caused the worst floods in the Houston area over the last four decades, including a national record 42 inches of rain brought on by Claudette in 1979. See the wettest tropical storms to hit Texas since Claudette.