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New dangers and staggering recovery in Harvey's wake

PORT ARTHUR, Texas - Safety teams from the Environmental Protection Agency kept a tense waiting game at a storm-ravaged chemical plant Friday over whether more of its volatile stores could ignite as the remnants of Hurricane Harvey drifted away but left Texas with lingering perils and grim tasks.

Among them was an expanding house-by-house search in Houston and nearby areas on missions that could push the known death toll from Harvey beyond its current 39 victims. Farther up the coast in Beaumont - now virtually an island-city of 118,000 people surrounded by swollen rivers and bayous - officials struggled to distribute bottled water after pumps feeding the city's drinking water system seized up under the deluge.

The soggy remains of Harvey spilled to the northeast - still carrying fearsome rain a week after surging ashore in Texas. Flash flood warnings were posted for mountainous central Kentucky, and nearly all the state and neighboring Tennessee were advised by the National Weather Service to be on the watch for possible flooding.

There was little need for authorities to stress the risks posed by what is left of Harvey - now a tropical depression. The world had watched the storm swallow the Houston area day after day. The Harris County Flood Control District put it into staggering perspective: at the height of the flooding, 70 percent of the county's 1,800 square miles were covered with at least 1.5 feet of water. That is an area larger than Rhode Island.

Floodwater surrounds houses and apartment complexes in West Houston. Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

Next comes the reckoning. People now have begun to return to their homes to get a first, sobering view of what was lost and what can be saved. One area, however, remained off limits.

Authorities maintained a no-go zone of 1.5 miles around the Arkema plant in Crosby, about 25 miles northeast of Houston. With no power, the chemicals inside - organic peroxides, a family of compounds used in such products as pharmaceuticals and construction materials - grow more unstable under the heat. Possible explosions could send plumes of noxious clouds of residue classified as skin and eye irritants.

Thursday brought moments of alarm. Police reported a series of pops and "intermittent smoke" coming from the compound. It was unclear whether that was the worst of it, or just the start.

William B. "Brock" Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called the potential for a chemical plume "incredibly dangerous" at a briefing Thursday. One Harris County Sheriff's deputy was hospitalized after inhaling fumes from the plant, while several others sought medical care as a precaution. Chemical-detection planes from the EPA planned more overflights of the plant.

Meanwhile, toward the Louisiana border, emergency services were stretched to the limit.

"We're running low on water and on food," said Lam Nguyen, a Port Arthur police sergeant who was overseeing a command center in a Walmart parking lot on Thursday. He was wearing a red polo shirt instead of his usual police uniform, which was lost when his home flooded. "Our shelters are filling up. We are getting them food, for now, but we are running out of food. We're doing all we can now."

A Black Hawk helicopter landed nearby every 30 minutes, bringing in newly rescued people. Nguyen paused.

"We are in trouble," he said.

Authorities also were still tallying homes damaged or destroyed in the disaster. Texas localities had reported by Thursday that more than 93,000 homes suffered damage, including nearly 7,000 that were destroyed by Harvey, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety report.

A jet ski drives along flooded streets of West Houston. Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

But that preliminary estimate does not include figures from heavily populated Houston and other cities that were hit hard by flooding, such as Port Arthur and Beaumont. The real number is likely to be far higher once authorities are able to assess areas that are currently unreachable.

On Thursday, thousands of people - the luckier ones - went back to homes that were waterlogged but salvageable.

"We raised up everything," said Susan Rath, who had returned to a home in south Houston where she and her husband, Jim, had tried to place valuables higher before evacuating. The water got higher still. They returned to soggy drywall, destroyed furniture and a closet full of blouses soaked up to the elbow.

"It didn't matter," she said.

The Raths had just rebuilt this house, after it was destroyed in a 2015 flood. Now, they will have to decide whether to rebuild again. "The main thing is: This is just stuff," Jim Rath said. "And the more stuff you have, the more you're controlled by it."

Vice President Mike Pence visited Texas on Thursday, stopping in Rockport and Corpus Christi, and touring the affected area by helicopter. He met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, who declared this Sunday a "day of prayer in the state." Pence also cleared storm debris in Rockport, near where Harvey first slammed ashore.

"We will be here today, we will be here tomorrow, and we will be here every day until this city and this state and this region rebuilds bigger and better than before," Pence said. Of the recovery effort, he said, "It's a long way to go; it's not months, it's years," adding that the challenges are "great."

Also, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that President Donald Trump would donate $1 million of his own money to help with hurricane relief efforts. Sanders said that Trump wants the news media to choose which charity receives the money.

There are early indications that yet another tropical storm may form in the western Gulf of Mexico next week. On Friday, the National Hurricane Center described it as a tropical wave that had the potential to strengthen as it drew moisture from the Gulf.

"If this system does develop, it could bring additional rainfall to portions of the Texas and Louisiana coasts," the National Hurricane Center said Thursday.

In Beaumont, the city lost access to running water after 2 a.m. Thursday, when floodwaters overwhelmed the pumping system through which the city draws water from the Neches River into its treatment facilities.

"When you take water out of the picture, people start to panic a bit," said Halley Morrow, a police officer.

Morrow said that city officials were scrambling to find a temporary solution to the absence of running water, and to assure residents that help was on the way. They were hoping for a water delivery from the outside, but weren't sure when it would arrive.

At Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas on College Street, a parking lot became a helipad on Thursday for a stream of medical helicopters.

Spokeswoman Mary Poole said the hospital was in the process of transferring patients to other local facilities after the city's loss of water.

"That's a game changer for us," she said. "We have medical supplies, we had food, we had staff. But we never dreamed we would lose water supply."

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Berman reported from Washington. Abigail Hauslohner in Beaumont, Tex.; Lee Powell in Port Arthur, Tex.; Jorge Ribas in Beaumont, Tex.: Arelis R. Hernandez and Avi Selk in Houston; Eva Ruth Moravec in Austin; and Brian Murphy, Steven Mufson, David Fahrenthold and Angela Fritz in Washington contributed to this report.

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