At least 18 dead, 13,000 rescued in Texas as Harvey moves north toward Louisiana

With three new deaths confirmed in Houston on Tuesday night, the official death toll from Tropical Storm Harvey has risen to 18, Texas officials said. All three of the latest deaths were from flooding, and the number of deaths is expected to rise. In Houston, the main shelter for flood refugees, the convention center, has almost 10,000 evacuees, double its capacity, so the city has opened a shelter for families with children at the nearby Toyota Center — where the Houston Rockets play — and is preparing NRG Park, home of the Texans, with room for another 10,000 people. Local law enforcement and emergency agencies and the U.S. Coast Guard have rescued more than 13,000 people in Houston and surrounding counties.

Harvey is moving toward Louisiana, which has already started seeing heavy rainfall and flooding. The storm, which made landfall late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane, has dumped at least 51.88 inches of rain in Cedar Bayou, Texas, marking the highest rainfall of any single storm in the continental U.S.

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