Floodwaters in the Houston area began to recede on Monday after days of heavy rainfall that led to hundreds of rescues.
Officials in Harris County, where Houston is located, reported no deaths or major injuries from the flooding. But in North Texas, a 4-year-old boy died after riding in a car that was swept away in fast waters, authorities said.
After days of heavy rainfall in the Houston area and other parts of Southeast Texas, the forecast on Monday called for mainly sunny skies with a slight chance of showers.
“We can absolutely see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we’ve made it through the worst of this weather event,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top elected official, told reporters Monday.
Areas near Lake Livingston, located northeast of Houston, received upwards of 23 inches of rain over the past week, National Weather Service meteorologist Jimmy Fowler said. Areas in northeastern Harris County, the nation’s third-largest county, had a range of between 6 inches to almost 17 inches of rain in that same period.
While many of the impacted neighborhoods and subdivisions along the San Jacinto River in Harris County were accessible on Monday, others remained cut off by flooded roadways.
The damage that was left on the roadway after heavy rain and knee-high floodwaters is still being assessed.
Most of the roads following the weekend were closed as they were impassible due to rising waters.
One central connector from Houston to smaller towns, the US-90 bridge over the Trinity River, was forced to close as a precaution. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) reopened the bridge at a limited capacity, allowing eastbound traffic on a two-lane configuration. However, the westbound lanes remain closed due to high water.
The western approach slab of the FM-787 bridge collapsed and the detour around the bridge is more than an hour drive.
A TxDOT spokesperson was not able to say when crews would begin and or finish repairs on the bridge, explaining that the conditions are currently dangerous.
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Source: Texas Tribune, ABC 13 Houston
