Thousands flee Texas towns flooded by Harvey; gas prices spike
A week after Hurricane Harvey came ashore in Texas, rescuers pressed their marathon search for survivors on Friday in large pockets of land that remained flooded by one of the costliest natural disasters to hit the United States.
The storm has displaced more than 1 million people with 44 feared dead from flooding that paralyzed Houston, swelled river levels to record highs and knocked out the drinking water supply in Beaumont, Texas, a city of about 120,000 people.
Arkema SA said that a fire started on Thursday in a truck storing chemicals at a flooded plant 25 miles (40 km) east of Houston had burned itself out by Friday, but that more blasts were likely in eight other trucks storing the same chemicals in the coming days. Police are enforcing 1.5-mile (2.4-km) exclusion zone around the Crosby, Texas facility.
With three months remaining in the official Atlantic hurricane season, a new storm, Irma, had strengthened into a Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, on Friday. It remained hundreds of miles from land but was forecast to possibly hit the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti by the middle of next week.
Harvey shut about a quarter of U.S. refinery capacity, much of which is clustered along the Gulf Coast, and caused gasoline prices to spike to a two-year high ahead of the long Labor Day holiday weekend.
With the presence of water-borne contaminants a growing concern, the National Weather Service issued flood watches from Arkansas into Ohio on Friday as the remnants of the storm made their way through the U.S. heartland.
The Neches River, which flows into Beaumont and nearby Port Arthur, had been measured at 19.5 feet (6 m), almost five times flood level late on Thursday. The river was forecast to crest on Friday.
On the highway leading into nearby Orange, Texas, new cars and trucks at a Toyota dealership sat in floodwater midway up their tires. The day before the water at been at hood level. – REUTERS
Story first published: 1st September 2017
Article source: https://www.samaa.tv/international/2017/09/thousands-flee-texas-towns-flooded-harvey-gas-prices-spike/