Hurricane Harvey continues to intensify and is expected to become a major hurricane as it moves toward the Texas Coast.
The storm system has prompted officials to issue voluntary and mandatory evacuations of some coastal areas, school districts to postpone a return to classes and local governments to brace for life-threatening floods that could last through Monday.
As Friday morning progressed, the National Weather Service said the coast only had a handful of hours remaining to prepare for the storm, which began to strengthen.
Meanwhile, the Houston region remained under a flash flood watch as events unfolded.
Local, state and federal officials gathered Friday at the Harris County emergency operations center and prepared to coordinate the regional response to what they say could be devastation on a massive scale.
“We’re watching conditions, expecting severe weather due to Hurricane Harvey,” Rosio Torres, a spokeswoman for the county’s emergency management office, said Friday morning. “(This) could last for several days because it’s a slow-moving storm.”
The worst-case scenario happens if the hurricane stalls in the Houston area through Monday or Tuesday before heading back to the Gulf of Mexico and return once again.
Authorities gathered at the TranStar building are preparing to coordinate high-water rescues, emergency supplies, food and water.
Torres said the agencies represented in the emergency operations center include the flood control district, emergency management office, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, constables’ offices, the fire marshal’s office, the toll road authority, the Texas Department of Transportation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Employees in the TranStar control room monitored the region’s roadways using the more than 900 cameras available to them, Torres said. They would watch the roads in case of an evacuation.
Harris County did not have an evacuation order, but some coastal areas did have voluntary evacuation orders, such as parts of Galveston County and the city of Corpus Christi.
This first appeared on the Houston Chronicle – an Energy Voice content partner. For more click here.
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