New Worries About Storm Damage as Beaumont’s Drinking Water Shuts Off
• Tom Bossert, the White House official who is spearheading the administration’s storm response, estimated
that 100,000 houses in Texas and Louisiana have been damaged or destroyed, and said Mr. Trump will seek billions in aid in the coming weeks.
The city manager, Kyle Hayes, said at a midday news conference
that he would not be able to assess flood damage to the city’s water pumps, or give a timeline for fixing them, until water began to recede, which he said would happen no earlier than Saturday.
Christus Southeast Texas-St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont decided not to evacuate,
but until the city water supply resumes, it will only admit new patients who need critical or emergency care, officials there said.
Taps in Beaumont ran dry, and officials there said they could not predict when homes
and businesses in the city of almost 120,000 residents would have running water again.
“We are here today, we will be here tomorrow and we will be here every day until this city
and this state and this region rebuild bigger and better than ever before.”
About 21,000 federal workers have been mobilized in response to the storm
and Congress is expected to debate passage of a multibillion-dollar emergency aid package in the coming weeks.
Houston fire officials said they would begin going door to door to search for victims, a process that could take up to two weeks.