‘A madhouse’: Houston hammered by rain, flooding from deadly storm

(CNN)Deluge.

That’s the best way to describe the nightmare Houston residents coped with Tuesday, after over 11 inches of rain fell in some spots overnight and into the next day — inundating byways and highways, slowing first responders, knocking out power and generally bringing the southeast Texas metropolis to a standstill.

Two people in Houston died because of the bad weather in the city, Fire Department Sr. Capt. Ruy Lozano told CNN. That raises the overall death toll from the storm system that’s been ravaging the area, as well as northern Mexico, to at least 22, officials said, with a dozen more people still missing.

“We got hammered,” Houston emergency management coordinator Rick Flanagan told CNN’s “New Day,” echoing sentiments by many others in the region in recent days. “We had cars that were stranded, mobility was stopped … signals didn’t work. It was just a madhouse.”

It still is. While the sun appeared Tuesday, more rain remains possible. And even though some parts of Houston were “high and dry” by midday, others were not, Mayor Annise Parker said. Underpasses, patches of highways and areas near waterways like the San Jacinto River, Cypress Creek and Buffalo Bayou, already strained by weeks of heavy rain, remain inundated.

“The defining feature of Houston is the small rivers that run through the city,” Parker said. “Many of them went over their banks and began to flood neighborhoods.”

The result of the flash floods and river overruns is “lots and lots of abandoned cars” and large pools of standing water, making for a logistical and traffic nightmare in the United States fourth most populated city.

“We’ve seen flooding before, but not nearly to this extreme,” said Gage Mueller, a Houston resident for the past 40 years and a Houston Rockets employee who stayed overnight at the Toyota Center because it wasn’t safe to go home. “It rains and it rains and it rains, and there’s really nowhere for the water to go. … It’s ridiculous.”

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/26/us/severe-weather/index.html