Texas has been slammed with brutal storms this week that have caused heavy flooding – leaving one panicked truck driver to scramble out of his vehicle as it sinks on the highway.
Shocking video captured the moment the huge white truck plunged into the deep floodwater as bystanders watched in shock and horror.
‘Current flash flooding situation stranded on I-69 near Shepherd, TX – please stay off the roads,’ the person who took the video captioned it on TiKTok.
The driver is seen in bright neon yellow clambering out of the window in a frantic bid to escape the doomed vehicle.
As the truck continued to sink deeper and deeper, another truck zoomed past it – sending water gushing on both side, and a different vehicle also managed to wade through.
After escaping amidst the chaos – the driver perched on the hood of the vehicle, stuck in the middle of the body of water formed by the catastrophic flash flood.
Flooding further intensified on Saturday – after a week of downpours ravaged parts of western and central Texas.
CNN weather predicted that the heaviest downpours in central Texas will take place upstream of the horrific flooding in Houston – which could worsen flooding in a region where 12 river gauges have already reached intense flooding stages.
The state has been pounded with brutal weather conditions since early April as dozens of tornadoes have hit the Panhandle to the Gulf Coast.
Certain parts of Texas have been smacked with ‘softball-sized’ hail and the relentless rainfall has caused rivers to see levels that have not been seen the devastating floods of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
On Thursday alone – some Texan communities saw more rainfall than they normally would in a two month period.
San Jacinto County – where the terrifying highway flooding incident took place – has been particularly drenched by the flooding.
Around 100-200 homes have been affected by the floodwaters in the county and mandatory evacuations are in effect.
The currently flooding is ‘85% worse than Hurricane Harvey,’ Emmitt Eldridge, the county’s emergency management coordinator, told CNN.
Eldridge also said there have been at least 58 water rescues in San Jacinto County so far – and even more rain is expected in the area next week.
Friday’s downpour left Texas officials scrambling to take cautionary efforts and issue evacuation warnings – worrying that the worst was yet to come.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo cautioned: ‘This threat is ongoing and it’s going to get worse. It is not your typical river flood.’
She further described the surge of water as ‘catastrophic’ and said several hundred structures were at risk of flooding.
As of now, authorities have already conducted at least two dozen water rescues in the county, in addition to getting 30 pets to safety.
Schools in the path of the flooding have canceled classes and roads remain jammed as officials have closed highways. Authorities have yet not reported any deaths or injuries.
For weeks, drenching rains in Texas and parts of Louisiana have filled reservoirs and completely saturated the ground.
Floodwaters began partially submerged cars and roads this week across parts of southeastern Texas, north of Houston, where high waters reached the roofs of some homes.
In the rural community of Shepherd, Gilroy Fernandes said he and his spouse had about an hour to evacuate after a mandatory order. Their home is on stilts near the Trinity River, and they felt relief when the water began to recede on Thursday but things worsened overnight.
‘Next thing you know, overnight they started releasing more water from the dam at Livingston. And so that caused the level of the river to shoot up by almost five or six feet overnight,’ Fernandes said.
Neighbors who left an hour later got stuck in traffic because of the flooding.
Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough claims there have been more high-water rescues than he was able to count.
‘We estimate we’ve had a couple hundred rescues from homes, from houses, from vehicles,’ Keough said.
More than nine inches of rain has fell over the county in the last 24 hours, according to the National Weather Service.
In Crosby, school officials said the driver of a school bus carrying 27 students stopped his vehicle just before driving into high water Friday.
The students were forced to exit through a rear door and were taken to campuses on another bus.
Later, Crosby school district Superintendent Paula Patterson said: ‘I am proud of the quick action of our bus driver’.
Of particular concern was an area along the San Jacinto River, on the eastern part of the county, which was expected to continue rising as more rain falls and officials release extra water from an already full reservoir.
Storms over the past month in southeast Texas and parts of Louisiana have dumped more than 2 feet (61 centimeters) of rain in some areas, according to the National Weather Service.
The greater Houston area covers about 10,000 square miles – a footprint slightly bigger than New Jersey.
It is crisscrossed by about 1,700 miles of channels, creeks and bayous that drain into the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles to the southeast from downtown.
The city’s system of bayous and reservoirs was built to drain heavy rains. But engineering initially designed nearly 100 years ago has struggled to keep up with the city’s growth and bigger storms.
Credit: Source link
