President Donald Trump to asses Storm Harvey damage in Texas

President Donald Trump is preparing for his trip to Texas Tuesday to survey the damage from Hurricane Harvey, the massive storm that has dumped torrents of rain across the state, flooding Houston and other cities.

“It’s like something from a movie”, one commenter wrote after seeing the pictures.

The update said that an additional 12 to 25 inches of rain are expected to accumulate through Friday over the upper Texas coast and into southwestern Louisiana, with some isolated areas receiving up to 50 inches of rain, including in the Houston-Galveston metropolitan area.

The amount of water in Houston is so unprecedented that the National Weather Service has had to update its official rainfall maps, introducing new colours representing higher amounts to accurately record the torrential downpours.

“We are anticipating over 30,000 people being placed in shelters temporarily”, Brock Long, who leads the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement Monday morning.

The Coast Guard and Texas National Guard have been assisting in rescue efforts, and the federal government has already delivered more than a million meals and drinking water.

“Houston is sort of playing catch-up”, says Philip Bedient at Rice University’s Center for Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation in Houston.

Speaking in Washington as he prepared to visit the flood zone, Mr Trump pledged “rapid action” from Congress, as he promised funding for the victims of Tropical Storm Harvey. The reduction in supply led gasoline futures to hit their highest level in two years this week as Harvey knocked out about 13 percent of total US refining capacity, based on company reports and Reuters estimates.

“Once they are in San Antonio they will be tasked with their operational assignment and then given a location for them to set up“, said San Diego Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief Dave Gerboth, who manages the search and rescue program.

Harvey’s centre was about 100 miles (160 km) south of Houston and forecast to arc slowly towards the city through Wednesday, with the worst floods expected later that day and on Thursday.

12 of 15 Texas National Guard soldiers arrive in Houston on August 27, 2017, to aid citizens in heavily flooded areas from the storms of Hurricane Harvey.

“With a rain event over a county of 4½ million people, you don’t know exactly where the rains are going to fall, you don’t know exactly which neighborhoods are going to flood”, Emmett said.

“Helping Texas overcome this disaster is going to be greater than FEMA coordinating the mission of the entire federal government”, Long said.

The National Weather Service has urged people to stay put if they are in a safe location, warning that the “catastrophic” flooding is ongoing.

Shopper Donna Balin, 45, said her house in nearby Seven Meadows didn’t flood, but she was anxious that plans to release water from reservoirs could push the flooding closer to home.

Harvey was the strongest hurricane to hit the United States mainland in more than a decade.

Outside of Houston, communities scrambled to house the hordes of displaced residents fleeing the rising waters and heeding the increased calls for mandatory evacuations of flood-prone areas. “Leave a marking on the roof so helicopter crews can see you”, he said, describing the volume of emergency calls as “staggering”.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that it was releasing water from the nearby Addicks and Barker reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou, the primary body of water running through Houston.

“We are only half-way through the rainfall”, he said.

A man drowned on Monday night trying to swim across flooded Houston-area roads, the Houston Chronicle reported the Montgomery County Constable’s Office as saying.