Texas (KLFY) – Harvey brought record rainfall in Texas.
Its floodwaters wiped out homes, forced evacuations and rescues, and threatened levees.
In Beaumont, some houses have water up to the roof, while other are completely submerged.
And if that wasn’t enough, the entire city of Beaumont, almost 120,000 residents, lost access to clean water.
For now, the city is providing 2 cases of bottled water to per household.
Beaumont resident Clifford Sias said when the rain stopped on Wednesday there was no flooding, it wasn’t until the army corps of engineers opened a dam that Sias’ neighborhood went under.
“Once they opened up the dam because they had to relieve the water and I understand that, it flooded us out back here. I’ve been back here about 38 or 40 years. The farthest the water ever got was up to that first street, to the edge of that street right there,” Sias said.
Port Arthur is also dealing with heavily flooded neighborhoods.
Port Arthur District 3 Councilman Thomas Kinlaw and his family were evacuated from their home due to rising water levels.
“It was kind of crazy. We were caught off guard a little bit because of the flood waters and how it came about. In a matter of hours, we are talking about maybe a foot of water to about 3 to 4 feet of water and it’s scary. It was a scary process of getting my family out to a military armored vehicle. The whole night it just rained. It rained for hours and hours and so much rain in a short period of time caught this city off guard,” Kinlaw recalled.
The Kinlaws were moved to the Port Arthur Civic Center until that began to take on water and flood.
They were forced to evacuate from there.
Despite the horrible situation that he and his family are dealing with, Kinlaw has been going with rescue groups to try to save as many people as he can.
He does that with the peace of mind knowing his wife and child are safe.
Also reaching out to help in Port Arthur was the group Rednecks with Paychecks.
“We surround ourselves with good people. Our team is just great people. We come from the military…everything from construction workers to firefighters…paramedics. We like to help people especially when we have equipment like this,” said Derrick Morse of Rednecks with Paychecks.
One of their missions today involved Andrew Ramirez. He and his wife have a four-month-old son who was born 3 months prematurely.
The couple has not been able to access their son’s medicine that helps him fight major problems with his liver.
The rescue group was able to get Ramirez back into his apartment and helped him move everything he owned out of his apartment.Related Coverage
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