Finalist: Staff of Houston Chronicle

Read the Chronicle's timeline of coverage here.

By Susan Carroll, John D. Harden and Dug Begley

With the Houston area under water for the third straight day, emergency crews rescued thousands of people with boats and helicopters as suburban leaders ordered massive evacuations over fears that levees would give way under the force of flooded waterways.

Much of Fort Bend and Brazoria counties were evacuated as the rain-swollen Brazos River was expected to approach historic flood levels Tuesday, and two subdivisions in north Harris County were evacuated late Monday amid similar concerns over aging levies.

Rains, sometimes heavy, are expected to continue throughout the area perhaps into next week, reaching up to 50 inches over the upper Texas coast, including the Houston-Galveston area.

"This is a landmark event," said Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long after making a plea for help from the public. "We have not seen an event like this. You could not dream this forecast up."

Across the state, up to 30,000 people may need shelter and perhaps 450,000 could be eligible for federal flood victim assistance, Long said. The other numbers from Monday were equally stunning: 8,000 rescues in the Houston area and 12,000 guardsmen deployed statewide by Monday.

Dramatic rescues across the Houston region stretched from Dickinson near Galveston - where people were pulled by boat then airlifted to safety - across the Houston area and into the northwest Harris County, where officials began releasing water from two reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou.

Up to 200 homes were already flooding upstream from the Barker and Addicks reservoirs in northwest Harris County late Monday.

At least eight people are believed to have died in Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath, and a Houston family of six was reported missing after driving into floodwaters near Greens Bayou.

The days of turmoil took their toll on Houston.

"I'm angry. I'm stressed. I'm outraged," said Luis Morales, who waded through water almost up to his neck pulling a boat carrying his wife and two young sons. "Everything."

Clearing people out

As the San Jacinto River overflowed into homes and the Brazos River rose, officials from as far north as Humble and as far south as Galveston County cleared out neighborhoods, warning that those who did not heed orders might be on their own as floodwaters deepen in coming days.

In Humble, police went door to door in the Northshire subdivision, urging stunned residents to get out before they opened the floodgates at Lake Conroe, sending water downstream. Conroe cleared out the McDade Estates neighborhood and recommended evacuations for a half dozen more.

By the afternoon, Brazoria County officials were warning that imminent, widespread flooding expected there Wednesday likely would be significantly worse than in 2016, when the Brazos River spilled over and left swaths of the region under water.

By 3:30 a.m. Monday in Fort Bend County, officials already were sounding the alarm. Voluntary evacuations announced for the Sienna Plantation neighborhood were made mandatory Monday morning.

"If people need to get out, now is definitely the time," said Alan Spears, deputy emergency management coordinator of Fort Bend County. "If the water is down, take that opportunity and leave."

People tried to leave Houston on its vast network of highways, but many ran into floodwaters lingering from days of torrential rains. Although some made it out, others turned back to the homes they abandoned hours earlier, planning to wait out the storm.

Houston's emergency response network remained strapped to the point that officials asked for anyone with a boat to help people stranded in high water.

"Please don't give up on us," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said. "None of us will give up."

Harvey hit the Gulf Coast late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and then stalled into a tropical storm, sending bands of heavy rain toward the Houston area. Torrential rains late Saturday into Sunday inundated the city, and brief respites Monday allowed some streets to clear.

Still, more than 130,000 CenterPoint customers were without power by Monday night, with crews unable to get to some affected areas. Houston TranStar was reporting 343 high water locations along major roads in the area, with hundreds more residential streets submerged.

Most rivers, creeks and bayous tracked by regional flood management officials were showing historic water volumes.

Spring Creek, running along north Harris and south Montgomery counties, had reached a major flood stage Sunday evening and was expected to crest late Monday, putting at risk residents of more than two dozen neighborhoods in The Woodlands and Spring areas on either side of Interstate 45. Voluntary evacuations were recommended.

No area safe

No point on the compass was spared. Most everyone in the greater Houston area and points beyond woke up Monday to yet another day of life-threatening conditions.

So many people went to the Greenspoint-area shelter at the M.O. Campbell Education Center that they ran out of space and supplies and started busing them to the larger George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. Shelters in Austin and San Antonio also took in some Houston residents.

Dickinson, in Galveston County, was among the hardest hit.

Debbie Barlow, however, refused to budge from the second floor of her elevated home on Deats Road. The city of Dickinson had put out a mandatory evacuation order but Barlow said she wasn't going anywhere.

"We don't feel invincible, but we feel like we're going to be okay," the 46-year-old said. "We have the third floor."

Pat Deeves, 63, spent Monday cleaning out her four-bedroom home in the Maplewood South neighborhood south of Brays Bayou.

After spending Sunday removing the 6.5 inches of water she and her husband, Sheldon Bloch, got in their home, they spent Monday pulling items out of closets.

"A lot of it is just a wadded up mess," she said.

But it wasn't been all bad. She found two handwritten letters from her grandmother - one from 1979 and the other from 1982 - she didn't know she had. And they were still dry.

The luckier area residents included countless thousands who had to cope with one more round of flooded cars and carpets. Even those for the moment dry or mostly so were not confident they'd been spared.

Whatever happens in the next day or two, Harvey has hit the record books, surpassing Tropical Storm Allison which inundated the city in 2001.

Cody Pendergraft, who lives a few miles west of the Brazos River in West Columbia, fled his home Monday morning for refuge at his aunt's house in Angleton. He packed a camper with clothes and hauled it to the Brazoria County Fairgrounds, where about 50 trailers were parked in an area expected to stay dry.

"It shows no mercy when it starts coming down here," Pendergraft, 31, said. "I don't think anybody really knows how bad it's going to be."

Reporters Emily Foxhall, Lomi Kriel, Mike Morris, Jacob Carpenter, St. John Barned-Smith, Lydia DePillis, Mike Glenn, Lindsay Ellis, Cindy George and Mike Tolson contributed to this report

By Lomi Kriel and Keri Blakinger

DICKINSON - Jody Garcia checked in with dispatch first thing Monday.

There were 176 rescue calls holding on the second day of flooding in this deluged subdivision south of League City, parts of which had turned into a patchwork of canals, thanks to more than 25 inches of rain.

The volunteer firefighter in San Leon grew up in this neighborhood, and for him the rampage of Hurricane Harvey was personal. His first rescue Sunday was his cousin, who was stuck in an attic with her small child.

To get to her, Garcia employed the ingenuity so many other Texans have during this disaster and enlisted the help of a stranger he found on the side of the road. Richard Robinson had a boat. Garcia had a truck. Together, they rescued more than a hundred people on Sunday alone. Entire families were lifted into Robinson's small, gray dinghy.

Such rescues - at least 8,000 of them at last count - have become the norm since the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey reached the Houston area Saturday. In neighborhood after neighborhood, first responders in high-tech water craft and volunteers in a motley flotilla of jon boats, kayaks, canoes and virtually anything that floats have waded into the flood to help those trapped in the floods.

Some wouldn't leave

On Monday, the second day of Garcia's mission in Dickinson, there were still plenty of people to be found. His first call was on Nevada Street, where water just hours before had gushed through like a river.

"Fire Department," Garcia yelled, pounding on the door of a house. "Anyone there?"

Elizabeth Ovendorff opened the door. The 71-year-old had been stuck inside for so long she didn't even know what day it was. Her cellphone died a day ago, and she had lost all power. When water coursed through the house rising past her knees, she climbed onto her bed with her dog, Bailey.

"I recommend and advise you to get out of here," Garcia said. "More rain is coming."

Ovendorff demurred. She didn't want to leave Bailey, and she didn't want to take him to a shelter.

"He doesn't get along real well with other dogs," she worried.

Garcia pressed. The water had receded some, but it was certain to rise again as the tropical storm hovered over the area, hammering drainage systems that were already saturated.

"People deciding to stay makes it harder for everyone," the firefighter said.

Ovendorff said she understood. She thanked him but wasn't going anywhere.

Garcia noted her address and promised to check back later.

The dispatcher sent him to Cedar Drive, where more than 10 feet of water covered parts of the road, leaving only the tops of some vehicles showing. Garcia checked out an apartment complex, but no one was inside. Gusts of wind had broken a window. Children's books and toddler clothes floated in the water.

Garcia climbed back into the dinghy with Robinson, who is 62 and works at Southwest Airlines.

"I was high and dry, and I saw that everybody else had a way worse situation than me," Robinson said. "I felt like I could contribute."

The two navigated carefully though the high water, but no one was home.

The dispatcher radioed: Could they go to 406 Deats Road? The call had been holding since yesterday, and there were apparently several people inside. The street was the epicenter of flooding in Dickinson, itself one of the worst-hit areas in one of the nation's worst-ever storms. Much of it was passable only by boat.

'Awesome to see'

Like Garcia and Robinson, dozens of volunteers had gathered here Monday, bringing their boats, kayaks, Jet Skis and canoes. One rescue group traveled from Fort Worth. The Cajun Navy, a grass-roots group of leisure boat owners, arrived from Louisiana.

"Everyone is doing what they can," Garcia said. "It's awesome to see."

They chugged past David Shapp and his girlfriend, Brooke Koppenberger, who stood in their garage on what had become practically an island.

"No one had any idea what was coming," Shapp said, surveying the wreckage of what he could see of Deats Road. The water had lapped up his driveway, reaching 2 feet high in the garage. Desperate neighbors at one point took refuge here after they tried to evacuate, but water rushed into their car.

"It was really surprising how long it took before boats started coming down," Shapp said.

But once they did Sunday morning, the 27-year-old engineer had already decided to stay. He figured they had made it through the worst. Surely the water couldn't get any higher than it already had?

A few houses down, neighbors on lower ground had long since abandoned their homes.

"Five adults, three children and two dogs," someone had scrawled in huge letters over the front of a house. On another, they had written "Safe."

Some who had left might have been among the roughly 160 Dickinson evacuees who arrived at Galveston's Scholes International Airport Monday afternoon to have the Texas Air National Guard airlift them to safer spots in North Texas.

As they waited, 6-year-old Paisley Golden hugged her doll and wrapped her arms around her sister. Just hours earlier, she had no idea if her family had made it out, or even if they were still alive.

"I thought my mom was dead," she said.

The rain had come as Paisley was visiting her babysitter, filling the street suddenly with shoulder-deep water. Her family was nowhere in sight. She only found them again a day later in this group of evacuees in Galveston.

'One big river'

John Curry sat quietly to the side. He had barely slept since his barking dogs woke him up at around 2 a.m. Sunday.

"I stepped off my bed and found my foot was immersed in water," he said. "My whole carpet was starting to float."

As the waters rose - to his ankles, his knees, his chest - Curry found higher ground at the home of a cousin. But he couldn't leave behind his two 60-pound mutts who were the reason he was alive at all.

So he put them in a foam ice chest and ferried them to safety one at a time. Together, they waited. It wasn't until rescuers picked them up 12 hours later that the scope of the area's damage sunk in.

"The whole place was just one big river," he said. "We saw people with tents strapped on top of their houses. They were the ones who wouldn't leave."

Curry didn't fault them.

"We don't give up," he said of the area's residents. "We love where we are."

On Deats Road, several residents were stubbornly waiting it out, even after the city ordered mandatory evacuations late Monday afternoon.

For Debbie Barlow, it wasn't being difficult, or even reckless. The 46-year-old and her husband live in a three-story elevated home. During the worst so far, water reached the first floor. If more came, they could go to the top level. And they have a dog, four cats and four chickens.

"We don't feel like we're invincible," she said. "We just feel like we'll be OK."

The city's orders had intensified the afternoon's rescue efforts. The rain began to fall again, elevating the urgency.

Garcia had meanwhile teamed up with Barry Gailey, a 44-year-old safety worker from League City who had a raised truck. Garcia and Robinson ferried people to Gailey, who trucked them through deep water to higher land.

"It's just going so much faster now that we're teamed up," Garcia said.

By late Monday, they had almost finished combing through an apartment complex at the end of Deats Road. One of their last rescues were four construction workers from Honduras who had been stuck inside since Saturday.

But who knew how many others were still there?

Communities under water forced to flee

By Susan Carroll, Dug Begley and John D. Harden

For days, the greatest risk from Tropical Storm Harvey for the Houston region seemed to come from the sky — with more than one trillion gallons of rainfall inundating creeks, bayous and rivers and eventually the dams designed to protect the heart of the city.

But Tuesday morning, the overriding threat became flooding so severe that stormwater poured from towering reservoirs and threatened levees. Swollen creeks fed into flooded bayous that poured into overflowing lakes, all of which had only one way out — the Gulf of Mexico, with fierce currents pushing inland.

"Get out now," Brazoria County officials tweeted Tuesday after a levee holding back the Brazos River breached at Columbia Lakes.

The region's flooding triggered a fresh round of evacuations, emptying out neighborhoods from Kingwood in the northeast down to communities along the banks of the Brazos River southwest of the city. By Tuesday night, Houston was under a mandatory curfew and nearly 30 percent of Harris County was underwater — roughly the size of the city of Austin.

The four-day toll in the Houston region was devastating. Tens of thousands of people displaced, hundreds of neighborhoods evacuated and a climbing death toll that had reached at least 24 people for the Houston-Galveston area by late Tuesday night.

Among the dead: a veteran Houston police officer who drowned driving to work, a retired Clear Creek football coach and an elderly woman whose oxygen tank failed during the storm. A family of six whom relatives said were swept into Greens Bayou in a van days ago was still missing.Another six people were found dead in Galveston County.

Traditional flood forecasting models were failing emergency officials as the storm surpassed levels of a 1,000-year flood, meaning the change of a storm of this magnitude in one year is one in one thousand, or .01 percent, said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. 

"We must all understand we are dealing with situations we have never dealt with before," he said.

Flood monitors along the San Jacinto River were broken in the crushing current, forcing officials to install temporary gauges.

Tales of heroic rescues — estimated now to be well into the thousands — were tempered by press conferences warning of imminent danger, vulnerable dams and levees, widespread flooding and evacuations.

The San Jacinto River surpassed historic levels, pouring into homes and feeding an already bloated Lake Houston, with all of that water heading downstream. Harris County emergency officials closely monitored the Barker and Addicks reservoirs, which sit on either side of Interstate 10 at State Highway 6.

Officials started releasing water from Addicks into the east-flowing Buffalo Bayou early Monday in hopes of preventing water from flooding homes west of the reservoir.

But with the two dams taking on at least 34 inches of rain since Harvey hit, about 3,000 homes were flooded by Tuesday nonetheless. The flooding is expected to spread west on Wednesday.

"If your street is beginning to flood in these areas or it's close to getting into your house, you will be flooding," Lindner said midday.

Officials puzzled over why Buffalo Bayou, over its banks for days now, was not receding, he said. The simple answer was that there was nowhere for the water to go, he said.

Waking up to water

Houston, which boomed in the 1980s, is largely designed based on a 100-year-flood model, which accommodates about 13 inches of rain in a day.

The city sits only about 50 feet above sea level, and has a vast network of bayous, rivers and lakes that feed into Galveston Bay. Some of those waterways flood frequently, creating clusters of seasoned flood survivors in neighborhoods like Meyerland and Clear Lake.

With Harvey, though, much of the city got more than 30 inches of rain within three days. The highest measure in the Houston area, west of Mont Belvieu, topped 51 inches.

People who had never flooded woke up to water pouring into their homes. Some houses were completely submerged along Interstate 45 near Hempstead. About 3,000 homes flooded in Friendswood.

Roads in Kingwood, a planned community of about 14,000 acres, became rivers because of the saturated ground and overflow from the West Fork of the San Jacinto River and Lake Houston.
People whose homes flooded emptied out into a middle-school-turned-shelter, where a little girl cried because she had to part with her dog, a 95-year-old woman leaned on a walker, and everyone had questions no one could seem to answer. Should they stay or go?

"I'm so depressed," said Norma Wagner, 85, whose daughter had called in the dark of night Tuesday and warned their home was surrounded by water. She and her husband of 64 years were rescued with kayaks and taken to the shelter with only a plastic bag of their medication.

"I feel like I've lost everything," she said.

At the Primrose School in Katy, volunteer Debbie Anders welcomed residents who were wading out of the flooding from the Barker reservoir, and setting up parking for other volunteers arriving with kayaks and skiffs.

"We have no idea how many people are down there," she said.

As she spoke, military and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters flew over the flooded west Harris County community.

Julie and Chuck Artz thought their house was safe from water damage.

The couple has lived on Idlebrook Drive in northwest Houston for 22 years, and their 45-year-old house has never flooded. Not even last year, when half the neighborhood was under water after the Tax Day floods.

But Sunday night, the rain flowing down into nearby Cypress Creek had nowhere to go. On Monday morning, with water creeping up the walls, the Artzes left home and caught a boat out of the neighborhood.

"Everybody said, 'Oh, that street never floods,'" Julie Artz said.

For now, they're staying with Chuck's brother.

"He's close to White Oak Bayou - but they've never flooded," Chuck said.

He paused.

"For what that's worth."

Watching the levees

In Brazoria and Fort Bend counties, the Brazos loomed as an enormous threat.

The levee near Columbia breached Tuesday even before the Brazos had peaked, leaving officials warning that worse flooding was likely yet to come.

Everyone west of the Brazos river and Highway 288 in Brazoria County were ordered to evacuate. Officials said the levee in the Columbia Lakes area had been breached and warned residents to "get out now."

"It's a true disaster," County Judge Robert Hebert.

But not all heeded the warnings.

In Columbia Lakes, Seth Irwin checked the levees near his home and saw water lapping over the levee edge, and then trickling down its banks, threatening to turn the earthen barrier into a mass of muddy mush before engulfing his soup-bowl subdivision.

Levees surround the community, protecting it from the Brazos to the east, and Varner Creek, to the southwest, but Harvey's intense rains had raised water levels higher than anything the region has seen previously. He and his neighbors decided to build their own barrier against the water, using plywood and bricks, bags of sand and planks of lumber.

"What were we going to do?" asked neighbor Keith Bailey, 32. "Sit at the kitchen table and watch this happen?"

The George R. Brown Convention Center — one of dozens of shelters across the area — held at least 10,000 people by Tuesday night. Officials were opening up the Toyota Center to accommodate more, pledging to turn away no one. Locals asked federal officials for more cots, food and supplies.

Shametrica Reagins found herself sitting outside an overwhelmed Red Cross shelter in the Greenspoint area Tuesday afternoon after her first-floor apartment filled with floodwater higher than she was tall.

Reagins knew the complex was at some risk for flooding when she moved in a few weeks ago, but nothing this bad.

"They said they had fixed the drainage system in the area," said Reagins, 26. "I thought the bayou would maybe overflow a little."

Instead, Greens Bayou inundated her apartment and thousands like it in the low-income neighborhood 15 miles north of downtown, just as it had during last year's Tax Day flood.
"It rained everywhere," Reagins' 7-year-old daughter Najeem said, cradling her 8-month-old brother.

Late Tuesday, there were still not enough cots.

Mayor Sylvester Turner ordered a curfew from midnight to 5 a.m. across the city as more than a dozen looters were arrested.

Turner asked again for patience and calm. Tuesday was critical in stabilizing the city, he said, and Wednesday will be better still.

"Help is certainly coming," he said.

St. John Barned-Smith, Rebecca Elliott, Mike Morris, Andrew Kragie, Monica Rhor, Margaret Kadifa, Lindsay Ellis, Jacob Carpenter, James Pinkerton, Alyson Ward, Emily Foxhall, Brian Rogers, Will Axford, Robert Downen, Mike Glenn, Gabrielle Banks and Nancy Sarnoff contributed to this report.

As sun finally returns, a devastated region tallies the damage

By Susan Carroll, Dug Begley and Shelby Webb

Even as large parts of the city came back to life Wednesday, much of the Houston area remained in crisis as worsening conditions around a reservoir sent more water pouring into thousands of homes in west Harris County and rising river levels threatened thousands more to the south and east.

People who ventured out found shorter lines at gas stations, fresh milk on grocery store shelves and an Astros game planned for Saturday. But to the west of Houston, emergency crews struggled with overflowing dams, trying to stop water from pouring into homes and flooding Interstate 10 - one of the state's major arteries.

The northeastern suburb of Kingwood, a community with about 80,000 residents, resembled a river, with roiling currents and water covering street signs and submerged cars.

People begged rescue workers at a boat launch to check on elderly parents they hadn't heard from in days, and to save their pets.

"We still have a long way to go," said Mayor Sylvester Turner, calling for the federal government to cut through red tape and get assistance to the tens of thousands of people displaced by the storm. "We're still in the midst of these challenges and they're immense."

The number of people known or believed to be dead in the Houston-Galveston area climbed to above 30 on Wednesday after rescue workers reached a van holding a family of six, including four children. In Fort Bend County, a Katy pastor and his wife died after driving into floodwaters midday Wednesday.

Houston police, who have helped rescue more than 3,000 people during the past few days, reported midday that they had found 27 of 47 missing people. Twenty remained unaccounted for.

"We're afraid we'll see a lot more of this as the waters recede," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said Wednesday.

Harris County flood control officials reported that "nearly every watershed is experiencing devastating flooding." But many also have started dropping, offering some hope.

Much of the attention Wednesday turned to the towering Addicks and Barker reservoirs 17 miles west of Houston that reached records levels after Harvey dumped more than a trillion gallons of rainwater on the region.

For days, officials have intentionally released water from the reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou, which snakes through the heart of Houston, hoping to reduce the upstream flooding behind the dams, where an estimated 4,000 homes took on water.

The Addicks reservoir spilled water into its overflow on Wednesday as officials scrambled to build a barrier to keep the water from flooding Interstate 10. The Barker had yet to overflow as of late Wednesday.

David Miller said his house in the Wilchester subdivision, sandwiched between the Addicks reservoir and Buffalo Bayou, had not flooded since 2006.

"Not a drop," he said.

A few blocks west, Sherri Tefft, wearing wading boots, stood in the street watching water creep toward the front door of the house her father built in 1977. The home never previously flooded, she said.

"I understand they need to release water, but they need to plan it better," Tefft said.

Some smaller creeks and tributaries will keep rising, part of a natural adjustment officials believe will carry water from neighborhoods into the reservoirs, designed to protect the city from floodwaters.

People who live on the west side of the reservoir that have not yet flooded likely will not flood, said Jeff Lindner, the Harris County Flood Control District's meteorologist.

The situation is not as rosy on the other side of Buffalo Bayou, which officials said would not crest in some areas until Friday.

There was no estimate for how many homes along the Buffalo Bayou flooded because of the releases, though officials estimated it likely was in the thousands.

Fort Bend County made evacuation orders mandatory early Thursday in neighborhoods near Buffalo Bayou. The county's emergency management office warned of "imminent flooding" as the Barker Reservoir reached 101.1 feet in the early morning, with further increase likely.

All sections of Canyon Gate, Grand Lakes and Ricefield Village now must evacuate. Many sections of Cinco Ranch and Kelliwood must evacuate. In Willow Fork, Greens Section 1 must evacuate.

Residents are instructed to evacuate at daylight.

Officials also warily eyed the Brazos River in Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, and said mandatory evacuations for neighborhoods at risk would not be lifted until the river began to go down and road conditions improved.

"This is a dangerous situation at this moment," Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert said.

Beaumont and Port Arthur to the east of Houston were the next to be hit by Harvey, which moved on early Wednesday into Louisiana.

"Our whole city is underwater right now, but we are coming," Port Arthur Mayor Derrick Freeman posted on Facebook.

No good damage estimate

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett announced all but two mega-shelters would close around Houston so evacuees could be consolidated in the massive NRG Center - which can house 10,000 people - and the George R Brown Convention Center, which was at capacity.

Houston Housing Director Tom McCasland said late Wednesday the city would not be closing any shelters despite Emmett's announcement, marking a point of tension in city-county relief efforts after the storm

No one had a good damage estimate for the Houston metropolitan area, the fourth-largest in the nation. The number of homes in the region impacted ranged from 40,000 to 100,000, but officials said they were days away from having an accurate assessment of the devastation.

Local officials said they needed more help, and faster. They wanted the federal government to pay for recovery efforts, which do not yet have a price estimate.

"We need a whole lot of FEMA representatives now," Turner said at a news conference. "We need the red tape to be cleared."

Good news seemed to follow bad.

The airports reopened.

Looting was reported from Kingwood down to Dickinson, where officials had ordered mandatory evacuations.

The CEO of a chemical plant in Crosby admitted that there was no way to stop chemicals caught without the necessary coolant from catching fire or exploding. An area 1.5 miles around the Arkema plant was evacuated as officials waited for temps to rise, likely setting off the explosion.

Many hospitals were still hampered by flooding, but were taking critical patients.

And many people got a first look at their flooded homes.

David DeLeon maintained a stoic smile as an airboat whirred through the muddy waters in Kingwood, past flooded apartments and water-soaked homes, through a familiar landscape now made unrecognizable by natural disaster.

The head of Harris County Sheriff's reserve command bantered with his fellow officers, warned other rescue boats to slow down and swerve around sunken cars, kept a watchful eye out for looters and residents still stranded in abandoned neighborhoods.

He held the smile even as the boat circled toward an elegant two-story house encircled by eddying water reaching the middle of the first floor.

His house. The home he had not seen since Sunday when he first began rescuing people from Harvey.

His wife and 24-year-old disabled son had make it out safely, but everything had been left behind. There had been no time to pack, to shuttle valuables upstairs. No time even to grab his son's medications.

That was what he hoped to do now, on Wednesday morning, during a patrol of Kingwood's flooded streets.

Capt. Denise O'Leary, who normally works missing person, went in with him.

They emerged a few minutes later, dripping up to their belts and carrying two plastic garbage bags, two black carry-on suitcases, medications and a waterproof case - all DeLeon could salvage.

As the boat pushed away from the house, O'Leary put a consoling arm around her chief's shoulder. The two stood for a moment, the enormity of the loss washing over them.

Then DeLeon sat down, glanced out at the rushing water, and smiled hard enough to keep tears at bay.

"We gotta rebuild," he said later. "That's all we can do."

To laugh or cry?

Up and down Houston streets, in block after block, wet couches, bookcases, wood strips, paneling, carpets and mattresses decorated the sidewalks on both sides.

In Meyerland, at their home on Braeswood Boulevard, where a "never flooded" sign drew David and Susan Reeves and their daughters to the buyers' table in 2010, the couple consoled themselves with a happy, though sodden, discovery.

"We found our wedding license floating in the water," Susan Reeves said.

She laughed. He laughed. He said he does that because it's better than crying.

Then he looked down and said quietly that he sometimes cries, too. "About half and half," daughter Julianna chimed in.

Andrew Kragie, Mike Snyder, Lindsay Ellis, Margaret Kadifa, Mike Morris, Mihir Zaveri, Robert Downen, Emily Foxhall, Gabrielle Banks, Jacob Carpenter, St. John Barned-Smith, David Olinger, Bridget Balch, Lise Olsen, Rebecca Elliott, Cindy George, Brooke A. Lewis, John D. Harden and Monica Rhor contributed to this report.

By Gabrielle Banks, Houston Chronicle, Lindsay Ellis, and Cindy George

Mona Saldivar watched from Green River Drive on a muggy Wednesday morning as authorities tugged a white work van from the murky Greens Bayou.

She'd held out hope that perhaps the van didn't contain the bodies of her loved ones, that maybe they were safe somewhere.

Then authorities confirmed the unfathomable: The bodies of Saldivar's four children, ages 6 to 16, and their paternal great-grandparents were inside the van. A relative trying to transport the six away from rising floodwaters on Sunday afternoon instead drove into high water, which swept the vehicle off the road. The relative escaped the van but was unable to save the others.

"This is like the hardest thing that anybody would ever go through," Mona Saldivar said by phone later. She declined to discuss the events that led to the tragedy.

The bodies of Belia and Manuel Saldivar, who were months shy of their 60th wedding anniversary, were found huddled together in the car's front seat, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. Four of their great-grandchildren were found in the back of the vehicle.

The confirmation of the six deaths Wednesday contributed to a rising number of dead or feared dead from flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Harvey. The Harris County medical examiner's office has confirmed 18 deaths, including the six relatives.

As of Wednesday night, authorities were reporting that more than 30 people had died - and they fully expected the number to go up.

In Fort Bend County, a Katy preacher and his wife who went to check on a family member Wednesday afternoon died when they drove into floodwaters. The sheriff's office identified the victims as Donald Rogers, 65, and his wife, Rochelle.

Donald Rogers died a few feet from the road named after his grandfather and just down the street from his uncle's home. That's who he and his wife were going to check on when they steered their Toyota Tundra into high water on Pool Hill Road, a hazard that family members believe should have been better marked or blocked off.

The sheriff's office said the couple called around 12:40 p.m. But by the time deputies were able to send officers and a helicopter, it was too late.

"This is just a remote area, and it takes time to get out here," Maj. Chad Norvell said.

Man electrocuted

Police, who spent much of Wednesday monitoring the rising crest of the nearby Brazos River and moving barricades around the county, said they simply can't block every flooded area.

In northwest Harris County, 25-year-old Andrew Pasek died in the Bear Creek Village subdivision on Tuesday, his mother said Wednesday. She said her son was electrocuted on the way to his sister's house in the subdivision.

Pasek's sister and her fiancé didn't have a carrier for their cat, so they left the cat when the neighborhood was put under voluntary evacuation. When it became clear they could be out of their home for weeks, Pasek - an animal lover with a habit of rescuing stray dogs and cats - went back with a friend around 2 p.m. Tuesday to pick up their cat. He drove his Jeep and tried to walk the rest of the way to his sister's house due to the floodwaters but was electrocuted on the walk over. A GoFundMe page was set up Wednesday for the young man, and it has already raised more than $24,000.

In northeast Houston, four men were reportedly missing after a swollen bayou swept away their small boat.

The four were among seven men who went out Monday afternoon in an attempt to rescue neighbors in the Northshore area, according to a missing man's wife, as well as reports by ABC-13 and Univision.

"My husband has been (in) the Wallisville and Normandy helping people get out of the houses," Perla Jaquez wrote on Facebook on Monday evening. "Now we can't locate him or his brothers. ... We are all very concerned."

Family members told news stations that the men's boat ran into Greens Bayou's swift water near Wallisville Road and Normandy Street, then drifted toward a utility pole. All of the men reportedly jumped out.

Three were found Tuesday morning, according to ABC-13, hanging on to trees and suffering from burns after being shocked. They were treated at a local hospital. The other four men reportedly remain missing.

A hospital staff member confirmed early Wednesday that at least one of the injured men remains at the hospital but did not describe his condition.

Authorities had no details on the incident late Wednesday.

In southeastern Texas, Beaumont police on Wednesday recovered the body of a woman found floating in a residential area.

A day earlier, police there found a 3-year-old clinging to the body of her drowned mother in a rain-swollen canal after the woman tried to carry her child to safety. Police identified the mother as Colette Sulcer, 41.

'Worst fears … realized'

On Wednesday, Orange County Judge Stephen Carlton said that two people had died Monday night in the city of Orange and that the deaths were storm-related, according to the Associated Press. He provided no other details.

Sheriff Gonzalez said he fears the grim discoveries of additional bodies once the floodwaters retreat and the streams, rivers and bayous go back into their banks.

"Our worst fears," Gonzalez said at the scene of the van recovery, "have been realized."

Trying to flee the floods over the weekend, Sammy Saldivar drove his six family members up Green River Drive toward Greens Bayou as heavy rains battered the white vehicle.

But the car began receding into high water. Sammy Saldivar managed to escape and clung to a nearby tree, Gonzalez said. Deputies would hear his screams and rescue him Sunday morning.

Water had receded by Wednesday to expose the vehicle, which was partially sunk, askew in the Greens Bayou's edge amid tall grass.

The children lived with their mother, Mona Saldivar, and attended Pasadena ISD schools.

Daisy, 6, hoped to become a teacher one day and had a great first week in Ms. Jackson's first-grade class at Williams Elementary. She loved princess dresses and animals, with a particular affection for the neighborhood cats she fed, according to Mona Saldivar, a 34-year-old dental assistant.

"She was bubbly, (a) social butterfly; she just talked to everybody and anybody. She would brighten up the room when she would come in the door," her mother said.

Xavier, 8, had just started third grade at Williams Elementary. He loved swimming, turtles, family game nights and building Lego Ninjago sets.

He liked the color green, and every Halloween he dressed up as a soldier, his mother said. He greatly admired his great-grandfather, who perished with him and was one of several military veterans in the family.

Dominic, 14, played trombone and had already had a spot on the Pasadena High School marching band. Like his little brother, he aspired to join the military and loved Legos. The boys kept their Lego collections separate, but Dominic would help his brother build.

Dominic was a rowdy, goofy jokester who was protective of his mother's time and attention, she said.

'Her laugh was contagious'

Devorah, 16, was a straight-A student in the 11th grade at Pasadena High School, her mother said. She loved reading and sang alto in the choir. She had talked about becoming a veterinarian.

To her mother, Devorah was like sunshine.

"She would walk into the room - her laugh was contagious. She was always joking around, and her favorite color was yellow. She was always wearing something really bright," her mother said.

As authorities pulled the vehicle from Greens Bayou, family members embraced and held hands.

Two loved ones later thanked community members for their support as they drove away from the emergency vehicles assisting with the recovery.

Another person put his hand on a woman's shoulder as they turned their backs from the swollen Greens Bayou to walk away.

Andrew Kragie, Robert Downen and Margaret Kadifa contributed to this report.

The first of nine failing freezer trailers filled with volatile chemicals exploded early Thursday at the problem-plagued Arkema plant in Crosby, sending a plume of black smoke into the community east of Houston and setting off a round-the-clock watch for inevitable explosions to come.

The initial blast about 1 a.m. Thursday sent 15 Harris County sheriff's deputies to the hospital after they inhaled fumes and got smoke in their eyes, but all were discharged by Thursday afternoon.

Crosby officials had been bracing for days for explosions at the plant after six feet of floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey knocked out power and generators needed to keep the volatile organic peroxides — used in making plastics and rubber — stored at the facility cool. The chemicals explode if they get too warm, officials said.

The explosion left unanswered questions about how contingency plans failed to keep the chemicals cool and how dangerous the fallout could be to a sprawling metropolitan area recovering from the biggest rain event in continental U.S. history.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long on Thursday called the plume "incredibly dangerous."

Arkema President Richard Rennard said the health effects are relative.

"They're noxious, certainly," Rennard said. "If you breathe in the smoke, it's going to irritate your lungs."

Arkema CEO Rich Rowe said earlier in the week that the explosions could not be stopped.

"There is no way to prevent an explosion or fire,"  Rowe said.

The company has a history of regulatory problems.

In 2006, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality cited Arkema for a fire caused by improperly stored organic peroxides. In 2011, the same plant was cited for failing to maintain proper temperatures of its thermal oxidizer.

In 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Arkema $91,724 after finding 10 violations at the Crosby site, many involving the mishandling of hazardous materials.

Arkema's CEO Richard Rowe said earlier this week that the company spent millions of dollars on upgrades after the fines and believed all issues cited in the inspections had been addressed.

The Houston area is home to more than 2,500 chemical facilities. An investigation by the Houston Chronicle in 2016 found 55 facilities — including Arkema — with a high potential for harm to the public, based on an analysis performed in conjunction with the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University. The study factored risks based on the amount and type of dangerous chemicals on site and their proximity to the public.

At least 13 of the facilities with the highest potential for harm lie within the 100-year flood plain. The Arkema plant lies within the 500-year flood plain, according to a Chronicle analysis.

Arkema officials wouldn't say the company had the ability to neutralize the chemicals before the situation became so volatile, and wouldn't answer questions about whether the back-up generators were elevated before the storm hit the area late Saturday.

Rennard said that other highly toxic chemicals on the site were in a "remote location," far from the exploding organic peroxides. Officials had not provided a requested map of the facility by late Thursday.

The Arkema plant lost power late Monday, knocking out the primary supply and back-up generators and forcing employees to move the organic peroxides into 18-wheeler box vans with cooling systems.

One employee was evacuated Monday night. Eleven other employees were evacuated Tuesday when the refrigeration in the back-up containers also began to fail.

Local officials ordered the evacuation of residents after seeing the chemical inventories for the facility, which the company has not publicly released. Company officials said they expected the refrigeration to fail in all the trailers and that additional explosions were inevitable.

The incident came as chemical facilities throughout the Houston area began drying out and restarting facilities that had been shut down as Hurricane Harvey approached last week.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board issued a safety alert Thursday urging the facilities to take special precautions as they resumed operations.

"Restarting a refinery poses a significant safety risk," CSB Chairperson Vanessa Allen Sutherland said in a statement. "When operators follow established startup procedures and checklists, it reduces the risk to a catastrophic accident that could cost lives and incur substantial product disruptions."

The environmental damage from those startups can be enormous.

About 2 million pounds of emissions have been released during Harvey-related shutdowns and incidents, compared to more than 5.2 million pounds all of last year. Emissions from Aug. 23 through Monday in the Houston area represented nearly 40 percent of the region's releases for all of 2016, based on pounds of chemicals, according to Luke Metzger, director of the advocacy group Environment Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a relaxing of state environmental reporting laws during Hurricane Harvey, and companies are still reporting leaks and other incidents voluntarily, according to TCEQ spokesperson Andrea Morrow.

Among those voluntary reports was a roof collapse at an ExxonMobil facility in Baytown that caused the release of more than 12,000 pounds of material.

In Crosby, neighbors in and around the evacuation zone remained worried Thursday, saying they had received little official information and a lack of a clear perimeter.

"But homes two miles away are safe?" asked Alicia Garcia, who had recently returned to the family's home about four miles away after evacuating Sunday because of flooding.

At least one couple didn't leave. Leo and Lajayne Opelia, who are in their 70s, texted friend Frances Breaux that they intended to stay.

"And if they didn't make it, they loved us," Breaux said.

Deputies wouldn't allow Breaux into the neighborhood Thursday to check on the couple.

"You know how older people are," she said. "They just don't want to leave their place."

Derek Davis, 36, lives outside the evacuation zone but shared his neighbors' questions and concerns.

"What was the basis of the blast zone? How was that calculated? How was safety taken into consideration? Do they expect a mile-and-a-half radius? Are they taking a fudge factor into account? Did they consider the wind? What was the fail-safe program they had?" he asked. "It seems like they're trying to save the product and risk the residents."

By Jenny Deam

When the contractions started, water was knee-deep and rising in the pretty brick house on Saffron Lane.

Nacole Myers, a nurse, knew she was in labor in those early hours Sunday. She had two little boys already. But she thought if she could just relax on the bed next to where they slept, maybe work on her breathing, she could keep the baby from coming. She wasn't due for a few more days.

She didn't tell her husband, Kevin, about the pain. At least not then. He was outside, keeping his own secret. Their street, their yard, their driveway in the Friendswood subdivision called Forest Bend had become an angry river. He watched a neighbor's portable basketball hoop get swallowed whole.

Earlier, they had talked about evacuation. The emergency alerts were blasting from their phones every few minutes. They packed some clothes and medicine, just in case. They grabbed their 3-year-old's stuffed wolf and the cellphone on which their 6-year-old played games. When the water began to slosh into the garage, Kevin loaded a generator, along with their Siberian husky named Shilo, into the back of the truck he had put up on blocks.

But it was like going through the motions, neither of them quite believing what was happening.

Then, suddenly, the water was in the house. Kevin switched off the power as it reached the electric sockets. Nacole timed her contractions by the clock on her cellphone. By the time the Friendswood police boats began appearing on their street, around dawn, they were five minutes apart.

Kevin half-stumbled, half-swam out to flag down a crowded boat for help.

"Go back," the people hollered, trying to keep him safe. "We'll be back."

"Y'all better hurry," he called into the rain. But they couldn't hear. In the distance there were others, screaming for help.

Awaiting rescue boat

Kevin told Nacole a boat was coming soon. She told him she was in labor. They woke up their sons, who saw their dad's wet clothes and thought maybe they could go swimming in their clothes, too.

Kevin watched his wife's suffering.

The four of them then gathered in the flooding garage to wait for the next boat. Nacole clung to the side of the truck, her fingernails digging into metal when a contraction came. Kevin told Nacole she and the boys would go in the next boat.

"I'm going to stay," he said, assuring her he would catch up later but needed to secure the house and get Shilo and other neighborhood pets to someplace higher.

"I'm not leaving you," she shrieked as another contraction struck.

"You don't have a choice," he said.

The water was up to the top of her thighs.

Another boat came by. It was full, too.

"We'll be back," they called.

Kevin began to panic. Nacole thought her water broke. She didn't know for sure but felt a sudden warm rush circling through the water where she was standing.

Kevin called a neighbor who had been evacuated and was at a shelter. A police officer overheard and promised to send a boat immediately.

When an aluminum skiff arrived minutes later in the deepening water outside their home, Nacole teetered dangerously as she tried to climb onboard. Kevin steadied the boat against a hard current and then swam back toward the house, his head a dot in the roiling torrent.

Losing race with time

Someone told Nacole to be calm. She wished he would just shut up as she reassured herself it wouldn't be long.

But the boat kept stopping to pick up people. They passed others, clinging to whatever they could. "We'll be back." Time is running out, she thought to herself. This is taking too long. She gripped her son so tightly he whined she was hurting him.

Finally, as the overloaded boat arrived at Wedgewood Elementary School, now a makeshift shelter, a wheelchair was waiting for Nacole. Soon an ambulance appeared. In the blur there were a few familiar faces. Arms stretched out for her sons.

"Please don't let anything happen to my boys," she pleaded as she was loaded into the ambulance.

She had no idea what happened to her husband.

Her blood pressure was spiking. The paramedics worried about pre-eclampsia, a potentially fatal condition that strikes pregnant women when their blood pressure gets too high. The ride was too bumpy to insert an IV.

Then the ambulance hit high water and could not get through. Her contractions were a minute apart. Nacole closed her eyes and tried to make peace that she would have the baby in the ambulance. She dialed Kevin's number over and over.

"I need you," she shouted. "I don't care about the house."

A paramedic took her phone.

The ambulance backtracked and found a different way to Clear Lake Regional Medical Center. And then: "We're here."

Nurses swarmed around her. Nacole's labor had stalled, and the baby's heart rate was dropping. His umbilical cord was tight around his throat. An emergency Caesarean section was needed. Without it the baby could die.

Doctors and nurses scrubbed for an operation that was at once familiar to them but terrified her.

And then, just before the obstetrician began the incision low on Nacole's abdomen, Kevin burst in, their sons in tow.

He had put Shilo and a few other neighborhood dogs on a roof, hoping someone would see them. He pulled down his kayak from the garage and paddled for the school. There he scooped up his boys, and they climbed into someone's high-water truck and raced to Clear Lake Regional.

Tyler enters the world

Tyler Cole Myers was born at 1:33 a.m. Aug. 28 with the rain falling. He was pink and healthy, weighing in at 6 pounds, 6 ounces.

On Thursday, Nacole and Tyler were discharged. Their home is in complete ruins.

Kevin had gone Wednesday night to check when the police began letting people back into the neighborhood. The couple found their refrigerator and washing machine tossed on their sides. One of the boy's beds had been cartwheeled and landed on top of a dresser; the new infant car seat started growing mold. Shilo was missing.

It was decided the family would stay with Kevin's sister in Alvin until they can figure out what to do next.

Thursday morning, Kevin got a call from a stranger who had Shilo. The dog is fine.

"I'm very blessed," said Nacole as she held her newest son. "There's a lot of people who have it a lot worse. We got lucky."