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American Morning

Houston Area Cleans Up in Wake of Allison

Aired June 12, 2001 - 11:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Little closer to home right now, and literally right in own backyards, rough weather and lots of it. Leftovers from Allison swirling over the Deep South. The system is pretty easy to see right there on the map, all the way from Texas -- covering Texas and Louisiana, barely moving from those areas.

Winds whipped up the surf in Mobile, Alabama, yesterday, and up to seven inches of rain fell on the area. That made for some flooded roads, as you might expect. Flash flood warnings are in effect today in Georgia and in east Alabama.

Now, it'll be a while before things dry up in Southern Louisiana in the wake of up to three feet of rain that fell there over six days thanks to Allison. One thing, for sure: it is soggy in Slidell. The New Orleans suburb got nearly eight of its 21 total inches of rain in 24 hours. You do the math. More than 200 homes and businesses were flooded out. One Slidell police officer said a fish was seen swimming up one street, and it was moving faster than the traffic was. That's a sad commentary.

A little farther out west, 28 counties in southeast Texas have been declared a federal disaster area due to heavy flooding in that region from Allison. Some of the communities resemble war zones, now that the water has receded and they see what's left behind. Houston was hit especially hard by the flooding, and our national correspondent, Brian Cabell, is there this morning, along with a local hero, we're told, Brian.

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, a number of local heroes here. Today is another clean-up day in Houston, though, Leon. People all over Houston trying to clean up from the floods three days ago.

In this particular neighborhood north of Houston, this is one of the hardest hit areas. They need some heavy equipment here. This mobile home behind me will have to be destroyed. That "X" on the side you see there indicates that rescuers went through there looking for bodies, did not find any, fortunately.

A number of rescuers, as we indicated, last Friday and Saturday, with us right now. Robert Nailon one of them, a citizen rescuer; actually, a wetland scientist. You saw this coming -- what, Saturday morning you got concerned? ROBERT NAILON, VOLUNTEER RESCUER: Yes, Saturday morning I told my wife -- I woke up and told my wife, I said we need to do something to help these people over here. We had been very fortunate over in the Bay Town area. We hadn't received but about 10 inches of rain all year -- or all week long.

So, not only -- only after I said that, the telephone rang from a friend of mine, Bob Waldreck (ph) and his neighbor, our neighbor David Smith's wife and daughter were trapped over at the Garden Ridge Pottery site, store were over there one I-10 near Holland Drive. So, We loaded up the boat, went over there and rescued them, got them to high water and then while we were there, rescued about 30 more people out of the Garden Ridge Pottery Store and Pappacitos.

CABELL: What were they doing there? Were they shopping when you...

NAILON: Some of them were shopping, some of them were just trying to get to some kind of high ground. They thought that area was high enough to be protected from the flood. But obviously, it wasn't, and so the water kept coming up and up and up. It came up very, very rapidly.

CABELL: How rapidly? Those of us who haven't been in the midst of a flood, does it come up like a foot a minute, a foot an hour, a foot every three hours? How fast does it come up?

NAILON: It comes up in some cases five feet in a matter of an hour or so. It depends upon the volume of rainfall. In this particular system, it sat over Harris County and just dumped rain all over the Harris County metropolitan area and north, up in Montgomery County and particularly in this part of Harris County, the northeast quadrant.

CABELL: Now, these people you were rescuing, what were they doing when you came upon them?

NAILON: Oh, they were desperate. It's the most amazing sight I've ever seen. We had people that were -- had been in there all night long, and had stacked display cases on top of one other to try to get out of the floodwater and try to keep themselves out of the -- you know, the contaminated water that was in the -- associated with the flood.

CABELL: Were you concerned for anybody's lives at that point?

NAILON: Well, it looked like there was a police officer inside of the Garden Ridge Pottery area there, and he had the situation under control as best that he could, and so there wasn't an issue -- at the time, the river -- or the bayou there had stabilized. So, it wasn't a situation where we were concerned that the water was still rising and we needed to get those people out very, very quickly.

But nevertheless, they had been in there all night long, and many of them for 20 hours in some locations in that area, and so what we did, we just did what anybody else and what hundreds of other people around this Houston area and Harris County and Montgomery County were doing, we're just helping out with rescues. And that's -- I'm not doing anything that hundreds of other people weren't doing.

CABELL: Mr. Nailon, thank you very much.

NAILON: Thank you.

CABELL: Again, Robert Nailon, one of the citizen heroes, citizen rescuers from this weekend.

I'm Brian Cabell, CNN, live in Houston.

HARRIS: All right, good deal. Thank you, Brian.

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