With floodwaters nearing knee height, Arlene Estle fled to the upstairs of the Houston house where she’s lived for 50 years and raised four children. It was many hours later before her son-in-law arrived by boat to rescue her.
Tens of thousands of children are returning to school Monday in Houston, two weeks after Hurricane Harvey battered the city, flooding homes, sweeping away uniforms and school supplies, and shuttering one of the nation’s largest school districts.
In a 2017 hurricane season that has already seen two monster storms, Harvey and Irma, manufactured homes are turning out to be just a small fraction of the federal government’s plan to deal with displaced people, with only 1,700 trailers available.
Last weekend Hurricane Harvey flooded Texas with several feet of rainfall and this weekend Hurricane Irma is taking dead aim at Florida. Harvey and Irma are also in Spokane, but they’ve got nothing to do with bad weather.
Congress on Friday sent President Donald Trump a massive package of $15.3 billion in disaster aid linked to an increase in the nation’s borrowing authority that angered conservative Republicans who hissed and booed senior administration officials dispatched to Capitol Hill to defend it.
The five living former U.S. presidents said Thursday they would team up to create the “One America Appeal” to raise money for storm recovery as Texas and Louisiana seek to regroup from Harvey and Florida and the Atlantic coast brace for Hurricane Irma.
The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly backed a $15.3 billion aid package for victims of Harvey, nearly doubling President Donald Trump’s emergency request, and adding a deal between Trump and Democrats to increase America’s borrowing authority and fund the government into December.
