After leaving thousands homeless in Houston, Harvey hits Louisiana

LAKE CHARLES, La./HOUSTON (Reuters) - The tropical storm that devastated Texas’ Gulf Coast spread to neighboring Louisiana on Wednesday, while the U.S. energy hub of Houston remained paralyzed by a record rainfall that also drove tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Slow-moving Tropical Storm Harvey has killed at least 20 people and sent 30,000 to shelters since coming ashore on Friday near Corpus Christi, Texas, as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years. On Wednesday it went on to swamp a stretch of coast from Port Arthur, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Harvey was forecast to drop another 3 to 6 inches (7.5 cm) of rain on Wednesday, with a storm surge of up to 4 feet (1.2 m) along the western part of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. The floods shut the nation’s largest oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, in the latest hit to U.S. energy infrastructure that has sent gasoline prices climbing.

As many as 10 inches (25 cm) of rain were expected in places, according to the National Weather Service.

Moody’s Analytics is estimating the economic cost from Harvey for southeast Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion, ranking it among the costliest storms in U.S. history.

Port Arthur emergency officials were receiving about 300 phone calls per hour, mainly from residents whose homes were flooding, according to U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Chief Petty Officer John Miller. About 20 people were rescued in the first two hours following sunrise, with seven helicopters and skiffs also doing house-to-house checks, he said.

“The situation is still very fluid in Port Arthur right now,” said Miller, who had no information on fatalities or injuries.

FLOODWATERS IN THE SHELTER

Flood waters inundated part of Port Arthur’s Bob Bowers Civic Center, forcing the residents who had sought shelter there into the raised seating stands, according to photos posted to social media. Efforts to reach Port Arthur emergency officials were not immediately successful.

About 300 people who had fled their homes around Lake Charles packed into a civic center that served as an emergency shelter.

The shelter was bracing for about 1,500 people rescued from floods by the U.S. Coast Guard, said Angela Jouett, who is running the shelter.

One shelter resident, Edward Lewis, 54, said he awoke from a deep sleep on Monday night in his home in Lake Charles, swung his legs out of bed and landed in ankle-deep water. He flagged down a passing rescue boat and spent the rest of the night at a church before being taken on a city transit bus to the Lake Charles civic center on Tuesday.

“No one has said when we can go home,” he said.

In Beaumont, northeast of Houston, a woman clutching her baby daughter was swept away in raging flooding. The baby was saved but the mother died, Beaumont police said.

Harvey made landfall for a third time early on Wednesday, and was about 30 miles north of Lake Charles, Louisiana, near the Texas border at 11 a.m. EDT (1600 GMT) with winds up to 45 miles per hour (75 kph).

Clear skies in Houston on Wednesday brought relief to the fourth-largest U.S. city after five days of downpours, although people leaving shelters faced new anxieties about the condition of the homes they had fled.

Handyman Mike Dickerson, 52, carried a grocery bag of his possessions through Houston’s streets as he tried to figure out how to make it back to his home, which was waist-deep in water the last time he saw it.

“A lot of people are going back now because everything looks dry around here. But people who lost everything have nowhere to go and are still at the convention center,” Dickerson said.