Harvey: Death Toll 47; Houston Door-To-Door Search Could Boost It Higher

HOUSTON, TX — Rescuers began the grim house-to-house search Thursday to find survivors of Hurricane Harvey, which battered the Texas Gulf Coast, first as a Category 4 hurricane and later as a tropical storm that pounded Houston with more rain in five days than the nation's fourth-largest city typically gets in a year. At least 47 are believed to have died in the record floods, and the number could go higher as receding waters reveal the full extent of Harvey's wrath.

By Thursday evening, Houston and the surrounding areas were coming back to life. Lights were coming back on, with the number of Houstonians without electricity the night before — 37,000 — cut to 14,000. Port of Galveston, the world's fifth-busiest cruise port, had reopened. The Houston Zoo and and the city-operated BARC Animal Shelter both planned to reopen Friday. People cut off for days by flooded highways shook off their Harvey-imposed exile, and even their television programming was returning to normal as Houston CBS affiliate KHOU signed off after 138 straight hours of coverage.

"It was encouraging to see people walking around and on the roads and getting back to work," Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said at a Thursday evening news conference.

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Watch: Flooding, Power Outage Cause Problems At Texas Chemical Plant

Houston is hardly back to normal, though, and it will be years before it fully recovers from what is predicted to be the most expensive storm in U.S. history. The first day of school in Houston was delayed a second time until Sept. 11, putting kids in the classroom two weeks later than they should have started. The situation is worse in Rockport, where Harvey made landfall Aug. 25. Schools are closed indefinitely there.

And as Houston shifts to recovery mode, emergency situations still exist in southeast Texas, where rescues are continuing at a rapid pace in Beaumont, Port Arthur and other communities that have been turned into islands by the rising floodwaters.

Many are still unaccounted for. Social media accounts peppered with desperate pleas by people looking for their loved ones mirror the worried, fearful mood all along the battered Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast.

To get a picture of the fast and furious pace of rescues, the number of calls from Harvey victims driven from the serenity of their homes to rooftops, the tops of cars or whatever high ground they could find has subsided from a peak of around 900 an hour but are still occurring at a fast pace — about 500 an hour, with an uptick in the Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange areas, the White House said Thursday.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that divers had recovered a man's body from Green's Bayou. Rescuers conducting the house-to-house search in Houston proper "don't think we're going to find any humans," District Chief James Pennington of the Houston Fire Department told the Associated Press, "but we're prepared if we do."

New numbers released Thursday by the White House and Texas Department of Public Safety provide a snapshot of the storm's devastation and the government's response.

The number of people left at least temporarily homeless — the ability of people to get back in or even save their houses won’t be known until the floodwaters drain — is a staggering 32,000 crammed into 232 shelters and three mega-centers, two in Houston and one in Dallas, the White House said. A fourth mega-shelter in Austin with space for 2,500 evacuees was expected to open.

More than 37,000 homes have sustained major damage and nearly 7,000 have been destroyed by Harvey and its flooding, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety report. Another 37,000 homes have sustained major damage from Harvey's flooding. Those figures come from a daily damage estimate compiled from reports by local officials and the figures have been rising.

Harris County, which includes Houston, reports that nearly 30,000 homes suffered minor damage and nearly 12,000 have major damage. Jefferson County, which includes Port Arthur and Beaumont, reports that 5,500 homes were destroyed and 16,000 others sustained major damage in areas where officials have warned that flooding could continue for days.

The report says there has been $180 million in damage to public property across the affected Gulf Coast.

The floods swamped sanitary sewer systems all along the coast. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a joint statement Thursday saying that floodwaters may contain sewer hazards, including bacteria and other disease agents and warning flood victims to take precautions during cleanup activities.

"These precautions include heeding all warnings from local and state authorities regarding boil water notices, swimming advisories, or other safety advisories," the agencies said. "In addition to the drowning hazards of wading, swimming, or driving in swift floodwaters, these waters can carry large objects that are not always readily visible that can cause injuries to those in the water. Other potential hazards include downed power lines and possible injuries inflicted by animals displaced by the floodwaters."

A 200-person-strong federal and state mobile command is "working elbow-to-elbow, starting in Corpus Christi and moving east with primary responsibility of the health and safety of those affected by Hurricane Harvey," the agencies said. "As we continue to respond to this natural disaster and its devastating effects on the people of Texas, the biggest threat to public health at this time is ensuring they have access to safe drinking water and ensuring waste water systems are being monitored, tested for safety and managed appropriately."

Houston Floods Dredge Up Alligators, Snakes, Fire Ants

The Coast Guard, which deployed a crew of 700 to handle an overflow of 911 calls in Houston, estimates it has saved at least 3,000 lives so far. Also assisting in the tedious door-to-door rescues are 14,000 Texas National Guard troops and 400 Customs and Border Patrol officers.

Abbott, who dispatched the Texas National Guard to assist in rescues in the newly ravaged area, braced Texans for Harvey's final fury, which may not end for days. "The worst is not over for southeast Texas," Abbott said at a news conference early Wednesday afternoon in Beaumont, which was completely under water Thursday morning.

Officials said at a Thursday morning news conference that Beaumont is basically on an island, cut off from the rest of Texas. The city of about 118,000 lost water service, and emergency rescue crews are trying to get bottled water into the city as they juggle rooftop rescues, hospital evacuations and other emergency operations.

In a major development overnight, at least two fires erupted at a crippled chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, that makes liquid plastics. The Arkema Group plant lost its main and auxiliary power sources, causing at least two containers holding the volatile chemicals to rupture and catch fire. About a dozen firefighters who breathed in the toxic air at the Arkema plant were able to drive themselves to the hospital, according to reports.

In a statement, the French chemicals company said the risk of more fires or explosions is ongoing.

“We want local residents to be aware that the product is stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of additional explosion remains,” Arkema said.

The company evacuated the plant Friday before Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm. A generator failed Monday, making an explosion imminent, the company had said.

Port Arthur, where numerous chemical plants are located, is also under water.

“Our whole city is under water right now but we are coming!” Port Arthur Mayor Derrick Freeman posted Wednesday on Facebook. “If you called, we are coming. Please get to higher ground if you can, but please try (to) stay out of attics.”

The scene of people stuck on their rooftops runs like a continuous loop of heartbreak and despair that won’t end.

Helicopters have plucked flood survivors from their rooftops, searing into our minds images like that of a little boy's anguished face as he was raised 300 feet from the ground in a basket, or of storm-weary great-grandparents frantically pushed in their wheelchairs through the rising, life-threatening waters. But of all the stories and images of misery and heroism and hope that might encapsulate Hurricane Harvey and all the damage it caused was this one that jars even the most jaded: a 3-year-old girl in Beaumont clinging to life on the back of her mother. The mother was already dead.

Though water is receding in the Houston area, flooding threats still continue in Fort Bend County, where the swollen Brazos River has yet to crest.

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Image: The city of Houston experienced severe flooding in some areas due to the accumulation of historic levels of rainfall, though the storm has moved to the north and east. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images News/Getty Images)