HOUSTON (AP) — The Latest on Tropical Storm Harvey (all times local):
8:35 a.m.
A western Michigan company is sending about 2,000 kayaks to Texas and Louisiana to help with flooding relief and rescue efforts amid Harvey’s onslaught.
On Monday, rain-fed floods reached the rooflines of some single-story homes in Houston and surrounding communities. Officials have received thousands of pleas for rescue. Boats and kayaks are being used to reach people stranded on rooftops.
WOOD-TV reports that retailer Walmart is buying the kayaks from Muskegon-based KL Outdoor.
KL Outdoor Chief Executive Chuck Smith tells the television station that his company is covering the shipping costs. Some kayaks were sent out Monday. The rest are expected to be put on trucks Tuesday.
Harvey made landfall late Friday along the Texas Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane and is now a tropical storm.
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8:20 a.m.
A fire official says 11 people were rescued from fast-moving floodwaters in northwest Houston after a private rescue boat capsized.
Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department spokesman David Padovan said Tuesday that the people who fell from the boat clung to trees to avoid being carried away by the current.
A Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter provided a floodlight early Tuesday to guide rescuers to the people in the water.
Padovan says it appears the people were being evacuated from their homes in a flooded Houston subdivision and were being taken to dry ground when the boat capsized.
It’s not clear what caused the craft to roll.
The rescued people were treated for cuts, abrasions and mild hypothermia.
Harvey has been dumping torrential rain on Texas since Sunday, causing catastrophic flooding across the state and in particular on Houston and the surrounding area.
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8:10 a.m.
President Donald Trump is making an all-out push to show the federal government’s responsiveness to the massive storm that has lashed the Texas coast and caused catastrophic flooding.
Trump will travel to Texas on Tuesday for briefings on the federal government’s work to help the state recover from Harvey’s devastation.
The storm marks the first time Trump has been tested by a major natural disaster at the start of his administration.
The president was scheduled to get briefings on the relief efforts in Corpus Christi, Texas, and later meet with state officials at the emergency operations center in Austin. The president will be joined by first lady Melania Trump.
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8 a.m.
Two more Texas prisons near the rising Brazos River are being evacuated.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says the 1,400 inmates at the Vance and Jester 3 Units in Richmond, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Houston, are being taken Tuesday by agency buses to other prisons in South Texas.
That brings to nearly 6,000 the number of prisoners displaced by Harvey, which made landfall Friday as a hurricane and is now a tropical storm.
The state corrections department earlier moved 4,500 inmates from the Terrell, Stringfellow, and Ramsey Units in Brazoria County, south of Houston, to prisons in East Texas.
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6:45 a.m.
The National Weather Service says rain is falling just east of Houston at a rate of 2 inches (5 centimeters) an hour.
The National Hurricane Center has said heavy rain from Harvey is forecast to worsen flooding in Southeast Texas and southwestern Louisiana.
NWS meteorologist Tawnya Evans says Harris County, home to Houston, is recording about half an inch (1 centimeter) of rainfall each hour early Tuesday, and that areas east of there are seeing much more.
She says the rain could abate later in the morning but that another band of heavy rainfall will soon follow.
Harvey is expected to produce 10 to 20 additional inches (25 to 51 centimeters) or rain over the upper Texas coast and southwestern Louisiana through Thursday.
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4:12 a.m.
The National Hurricane Center says heavy rain from Harvey is expected to worsen flooding in Southeast Texas and southwestern Louisiana.
The center says in its 4 a.m. CDT advisory that flooded roadways continue to make travel difficult and advises people to take shelter.
The center of the storm was marked 135 miles (220 kilometers) south-southwest of Port Arthur, Texas, and was moving east at 3 mph (4.8 kph) with sustained winds of up to 45 mph (72 kph).
The storm was expected to make a slow turn to the northeast on Tuesday, placing the center just off the middle and upper Texas Gulf coast through Tuesday night before moving inland. Harvey is expected to produce 10 to 20 additional inches or rain over the upper Texas coast and southwestern Louisiana through Thursday, with isolated storm totals maybe reaching 50 inches (130 centimeters) over the Houston-Galveston area and the upper Texas coast.
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2:10 a.m.
Crews overwhelmed by thousands of rescue calls during one of the heaviest downpours in U.S. history have had little time to search for other potential victims. But officials acknowledge the grim reality that fatalities linked to Harvey could soar once the devastating floodwaters recede.
Even worse, officials now worry that the worst may be yet to come.
More than three days after the storm ravaged the Texas coastline as a Category 4 hurricane, authorities worry that the tropical storm now parked over the Gulf Coast will return and deliver a knockout blow to a Houston region already ravaged by devastating downpours generating an amount of rain normally seen only once in more than 1,000 years.
Some fear that may be more than the nation’s fourth-largest city could bear.