HARVEY-GEORGE STRAIT VISITS ROCKPORT
ROCKPORT, Texas (AP) _ Country superstar George Strait has offered messages of encouragement to his neighbors in a South Texas town battered by Hurricane Harvey.
Strait was joined by Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday in Rockport, a town of about 10,000 near where Harvey made landfall Aug. 25.
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports about 2,000 people turned out to see Abbott and Strait, who wore a cap with the name Fulton on it. Fulton is a nearby town also hit by Harvey.
Strait says he and his wife have owned a home in the Rockport area for years, they like it just the way it was and “want to help get it back there.”
Strait and Abbott signed autographs while outside a hardware store in Rockport, 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Corpus Christi.
HARVEY-RENT DEMAND IN HOUSTON
HOUSTON (AP) – Houston officials are trying to determine how many public housing residents were wrongly told to pay rent this month for homes left uninhabitable by Hurricane Harvey.
The Houston Chronicle reports that some residents at the Houston Housing Authority’s Clayton Homes complex were told they’d lose their units if they didn’t pay.
The complex is one of the city’s few subsidized developments.
Houston Housing Authority President Tory Gunsolley initially said federal rules didn’t allow the agency to waive rent, even in a disaster. But a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesman later said tenants don’t have to pay for uninhabitable units.
Gunsolley’s office is working to determine how many of its more than 180 displaced tenants paid rent for flooded units. He says those who did will be reimbursed.
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HARVEY-CHEMICAL PLANT LAWSUIT
HOUSTON (AP) – Eleven plaintiffs, including a 4-year-old girl, have joined the $1 million lawsuit against a Houston-area chemical plant rocked by explosions after floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey inundated the facility.
Six deputies and one EMS official filed a lawsuit in Harris County Court earlier this month, saying fumes from an Aug. 31 explosion in Crosby left them vomiting and gasping for breath. The Houston Chronicle reports six more first responders along with five residents joined the case Wednesday, saying they’ve suffered from everything from burning eyes to bronchitis following the explosions.
French-owned Arkema had warned explosions were inevitable after Harvey’s floodwaters engulfed the backup generators, knocking out the refrigeration necessary to keep the organic peroxides being stored there from degrading and catching fire.
Arkema has said it will “vigorously defend” the lawsuit.
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HARVEY-FLOOD MAPS STUDY
HOUSTON (AP) – A study of part of southeast Houston suggests that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood plain maps were woefully out-of-date long before Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas Gulf Coast.
Researchers at Rice University and Texas A&M University at Galveston studied one section of southeast Harris County, which includes Houston, over a decade-long period that did not include Hurricane Harvey, but did include storms from Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Tropical Storm Allison in 2001.
According to their research, FEMA’s flood plain maps for that area missed about 75 percent of the damages from Ike, Allison, and three other storms.
The maps are intended to predict which areas have a 1 percent chance in a given year of a major flood.
FEMA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.