The US city of Houston is in the grip of the biggest storm in the history of the state of Texas, officials say.<\/p>\n
A record 30in of rain (75cm) has fallen on the city in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, turning roads into rivers.<\/p>\n
The area is expected to have received a year’s rainfall within a week. Five people are reported dead. Helicopters have plucked victims from rooftops.<\/p>\n
With rescue services overstretched as the rain continues, many people are having to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n
Harvey made landfall as a category-four hurricane late on Friday. It was later downgraded to a tropical storm.<\/p>\n
Up to 2,000 people have been rescued in and around Houston, the fourth-largest city in the US, where about 6.6m people live in the metropolitan area.<\/p>\n
In Washington, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) said it was committed to assisting in the rescue effort.<\/p>\n
Fema administrator Brock Long said providing shelter to 30,000 people in need was “going to be a very heavy lift”. He added that the agency was also working to restore power and critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Thousands of homes are without electricity. Many schools are closed – as are the two main airports, with runways completely flooded.<\/p>\n
An inundated care home in Dickinson, about 30 miles (50 km) south east of the city, has now been evacuated by helicopter after an image of\u00a0several elderly women sitting in a lounge in waist-deep water\u00a0went viral on social media.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US city of Houston is in the grip of the biggest storm in the history of the state of Texas, officials say. A record 30in of rain (75cm) has fallen on the city in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, turning roads into rivers. The area is expected to have received a year’s rainfall within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[10613,10614,10615],"class_list":["post-348635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-emergency-service","tag-storm-harvey","tag-us-flooding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=348635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=348635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=348635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=348635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}