everything here on the ground remains safe. i know the concerns and i understand the concerns when you see a plume of smoke, perhaps material coming down. we understand that. i think what the public expects and what we expect from them is to utilize every available resource to call on all available resources to assume the cost of whatever it takes to contain and put these fires out as quickly as possible. . so right now no evacuation orders in place. children were allowed to go back to school here in the area around deer park which is southeast of the downtown houston area. they say it could take until at least tomorrow to put out this fire. all right. we ll talk again tomorrow. thank you very much in deer park, texas. cnn will debut the latest 2020
plus ichblgs in t inches in hou area. to double that would be mind-boggling is the best way to describe it. are we done with the storm in no. by no means. but to double the totals would be significant. i would say we have a long way to go to do that. but the rain fall i experienced earlier today was the most intense duluth of tropical rain i have ever seen in my life. rain drops were huge. not sprinkles. we are talking about fat thick tropical rains that inundate anything in its path. all right. derek van dam reporting live from houston, texas. thank you very much. good talking to you. joining us now is micah garg. he was with his wife and two teenage daughters at houston airport for more than 20 hours after trying to get home from a vacation in costa rica. micah, we heard here that you re finally at least in dallas. how are you holding up, you and your family? we are a little frayed around
pulling together. dallas is planning to open a mega shelter and host 5,000 evacuees. hoping to have that open by tuesday. it will be a challenge getting there from houston. transportation officials say many roads at this stage are impassable. the mayor of houston says more than 1,000 have been rescued across the area. at least 1500 evacuated to shelters. still with so much destruction, many are asking why no mandatory evacuation was ordered. on sunday the mayor defended his decision. in the best interest of houstonians, it was the right decision in terms of their safety. and always we must put the interest of the city of houston and houstonians first. and we are working toward the
of boston is sending in. he s sending more cots. the number right now 5500. i suspect by the end of the day that number will rise exponentially. some people just need him to come in from their homes for the night, for example. some came in from the area for the night. and are getting back to their home or some other place, with relatives. 5500 now, expected to rise. we re working with red cross and our other partners to make sure we have the supplies, the food. people are needing clothing. literally people are coming in and they are coming in wet. they are needing clothing, clothing. we ve asked some of our business partners for things like diapers, baby formula, things of that nature. we ve got kids, babies, we ve got all the way up to senior citizens, and they are needing everything. so they are needing clothing.
water isn t going anywhere. flooding streets of houston. what happens? you know, we mention this about an hour ago. and we re concerned about two reservoirs that have reached their full capacity just to the west of the city. the attics and reservoirs are significant because these prevent the flooding in downtown houston. but they have reached the capacity to where engineers are telling us at cnn that they need to do a dual release here within the next 30 minutes. and that will prevent more catastrophic flooding in the downtown houston area. however, the communities close to the reservoirs are going to include are going to be impacted by additional flooding.