take place. we re getting to people as fast as we can. you re watching helicopter rescues. we ve never seen a flood of this magnitude. i was talking to an interview yesterday. he said like bibliccal proportion. i said exactly. beaumont, galveston, your district. some of that help likely will come from congress. and this is a question, for example, senator ted cruz has been battling as well. you voted against the relief bill. you say lawmakers can t play politics with relief money. do you re re gret that vote in 2013, seeing what your xhoont has to go through? i wanted it to be a standalone vote but not improvement for other areas of the country, buildings and other programs in other areas of the country. i had that conversation with the leadership. i said let make this about the relief effort bill not the other
it s quite a scene to see people who had notice that they were getting some help. these helicopter rescues have been happening for most of the morning. so people in the neighborhood are liking word that the choppers are either touching down in shallow water or dropping their hoist which is what more likely they are doing. so you can see here some of the folks have suitcases. these are the first suitcases we have seen. they re getting ready to hunker down here for a few days. there s water and food and shelter inside. that s one advantage they have inside. you were on a black hawk earlier today, were you not, miguel? we were on a seahawk. navy seahawk. which is a modified version. here is the black hawk taking off again. just like that, back in the air. yeah, we were on a seahawk.
we re going to stay with that and watch that helicopter go in and then they are going back out. there are several naval helicopters and many coast guard helicopters and the national guard, 12,000 national guard troops in texas have been activated since monday. they ve got helicopter as well. there are a lot of helicopter rescues and boat rescues going on right now. we ll stay with that. joining me on the phone is pam alfred who s stuck in a bowling alley surrounded by water with 300 more people in port arthur. you heard bill karins saying that port arthur is in a bit of a worse situation than beaumont is right now. how long have you been at the bowling alley and tell me what the situation is? i ve been at this bowling alley since about 10:30 last night. what s the situation there? well, there s about 300 people here, if not more.
someone come grab you by a air, we will hopefully have so helicopter guide wire, he got to much better pictures to show be incredibly happy. you. shepard: will go back to the moment you do. but also wondering what am i let s get an update on the doing flying through the air storm. adam class at the extreme over my flooded city? it must be the most surreal weather center. is a big one. these are our latest numbers. experience and yet we re watching it again and again and we still probably have another inch or so. again throughout the day. this is now the wettest storm, helicopter rescues, but rescues, many of them, many of them from the wettest tropical system in texas history, the second volunteers especially those but wettest in the united states history. before it s all said and done, rescues on the ground. the mayor of houston is speaking it becomes the wettest system. live now about the troubles it s what we are looking out. facing his city. the showers in the houston area, but
it s a hardship. i was reading this morning that ben carson, he s going to be of the president today, that particular agency of government is going to be so critical because they ll have to house some people north of a year. it could be 1-2 years that they ll be in some sort of public housing. they ll move them from the shelters and then they ll move into public housing. sandra: as they watch this rescued by boat happening right now, some other details that we just heard at that press conference happening at the pentagon with a national guard major general james witham. over 3,500 people have been rescued by boat, over 300 helicopter rescues, roughly 300 pets also rescued and texas for harvey. abby, you ve been covering this all weekend. on believable to see this life before our eyes. abby: it s really heartbreaking. this all broke friday night into saturday morning and at that point, the hurricane had been