Child dies in flood, hundreds saved after storms lash Texas

Hundreds of people have been rescued from flooded homes and roads in the Houston area of southern Texas, where rainfall continued into Sunday, while to the north in the Fort Worth area, a child has died after a car was caught in floodwaters.

In the past few days, storms have forced numerous high-water rescues in the Houston area, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes, the Associated Press reported.

In Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, a five-year-old boy died when he was swept away after the vehicle he was riding in became stuck in swift-moving water near the community of Lillian early on Sunday morning, an official said.

The child and two adults were trying to get to dry ground when they were swept away, Jamie Moore, the Johnson County emergency management director, wrote in a Facebook post.

The two adults were rescued about 5am and taken to a hospital, while the child was found dead about 7.20am. in the water.

Although forecasters expected storms to begin tapering off in southeastern Texas, high waters continued to close some roads and left residents facing lengthy cleanups in neighbourhoods where rising river levels led to weekend evacuation orders.

Houston is one of the most flood-prone metro areas in the country. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dumped historic rainfall that flooded thousands of homes and resulted in more than 60,000 rescues.

In one soggy area of suburban Houston, school officials in Channelview cancelled classes and said a survey of their employees found many of them had experienced circumstances that would prevent them from coming to work.

“These folks have suffered much, people,” Trinity County Sheriff Woody Wallace said on Sunday during a Facebook livestream as he rode a boat through a rural flooded neighbourhood. Partially submerged cars and street signs peeked above the water around him.

Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District, said on Sunday “things are improving slowly”.
Harris is the US’s third-largest county and includes Houston.

“We have water going down on our river systems,” Mr Lindner said. The San Jacinto River crested on Saturday, he said.

So far, Sunday’s additional rain did not seem to be causing any new flooding but he urged people to still be cautious, noting that many areas were still flooded.

“We really need everybody to give it just another day before we feel comfortable that conditions are safe,” Mr Lindner said.

In the past week, areas near Lake Livingston, located northeast of Houston, received upwards of 23 inches of rain, Jimmy Fowler, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said on Sunday.

Scattered showers in the Houston area on Sunday brought light to moderate rainfall, he said. He said the rain would taper off in the evening, with no heavy rain events expected in the next week or so.

Storms brought nine inches of rain in a span of six to eight hours in some areas from central Texas to the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight, according to Matt Stalley, a National Weather Service meteorologist. He said the rains washed out some roads west of Waco.

In Brazil, floods in southern Rio Grande do Sul state had killed at least 75 people in the past seven days, and another 103 were reported missing, local authorities said on Sunday.

At least 155 people were injured, while damage from the rains forced more than 88,000 people from their homes. Approximately 16,000 took refuge in schools, gymnasiums and other temporary shelters.