President Trump declares emergency in Louisiana for storm Harvey. The forecast for the deadly storm Harvey that has inundated the Texas city of Houston is “uncertain,” a top US weather official said Monday. National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini told a news conference in Washington that Harvey, now a tropical storm, “is creating its own circulation even aloft, so this track forecast still represents a difficult forecast for us. We have to pay attention as we move forward.”
At the moment, Harvey was expected to move east over the next five days toward the Texas-Louisiana state line. As of Monday morning, there were reports of five to six inches (12.7 to 15.2 centimeters) of rain per hour and unofficial reports of up to eight inches in a band of heavy rainfall. More than 30,000 people are expected to be housed in shelters as monster storm Harvey continues to devastate the Texas city of Houston and surrounding areas, a top federal emergency official said Monday.
“This shelter mission is going to be a very heavy lift. We’re anticipating over 30,000 people being placed in shelters temporarily to basically stabilize the situation and provide for their care,” Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Brock Long told a news conference in Washington. “Right now this is still an ongoing situation. We’re not at recovery yet,” he said, adding that authorities were conducting swift water rescues and searching for victims across as many as 50 counties in Texas.
