community together. so, we know that that help will be tremendous. and for those individuals around the country, if you give to the salvation army, it would be great because that is the driving wheel that s been helping us tremendously. as we ve been talking to you, we ve been watching that river still rising in beaumont. we ve also been watching smoke rise from a chemical facility in beaumont, texas, there. appears to be a fire or an explosion. one of the most one of the biggest problems i know, commissioner alfred, is access to the basics, clean tap water and that s still an issue for residents in beaumont. it is. it is, and it s something that we we have to get corrected and it has to be done in short order. i have tremendous faith and confidence in those engineers companies and, i.e., private firms that have pitched in to help the city. i have tremendous, tremendous
meteorologist karen maginnis with the very latest on the storm s path this morning. good morning. good morning. yes, we re not out of the clear. the rivers continue to rise. out of 88 river gauges we looked at all the way from corpus christi to lake charles, the majority are moderate to major flood stage. beaumont, port arthur, texas. they saw 26 inches in one 24-hour period. until an hour or so ago when i looked at some of the radar images coming out of the area, they re still reporting mostly light rainfall. now they re pumping. pumping water at the natches river. they are saying that the river is going to crest on saturday. they can t get the pumps work ing until the river goes down. it doesn t look like that s going to happen until we head into saturday. then it is going to far exceed the previous record set in 1994
beaumont, port arthur area, devastated by the flooding, as well, it would equal the size of the state of south carolina. that s roughly 33,000 square miles. another problem, we heard that the water off in beaumont. the natches river is flooding. say they they can t fix the pumps until the natches river goes down. starts receding. well, it s going to continue to go up even as we head into saturday. saturday is going to far exceed the record set in 1999. that record was at 13 feet. it looks like it s going to crest on saturday at just about 19.5 feet. then it s going to take some days for it to go down. so in the meantime, all the residents of beaumont, port arthur, who suffered with this one-day total, 26 inches of rain, it s going to take time before that river goes down. there is in light precipitation
there was nothing but air coming out. you couldn t brush your teeth. that is going to add to the misery factor for the 118,000 or so residents in beaumont. plus all evacuees. not much of beaumont left. so all of those people are here. and all of those people are dependent on the water supply. here s here s the issue. the main pumping station is in the natches river. they can t get to it because of a flood. they don t know if the pumps are broken there, if repairs need to be made because they just can t get there until the daylight hours. it s still dark here. they re going to take a boat out to there and see what s wrong. if any repairs need to be made, if this is more than just a quick fix, then they are going to have to wait until, as karen said, the river goes down. and that could be a long, drawn-out, extra misery in this event. so far the power and water were
in the area. another statistic to tell you, of 88 river gauges, all the way from corpus christi toward lake charles, the vast majority of them are at moderate to major flooding. you see the cluster around the houston area as we well know. back to you. all right. karen maginnis, the cnn weather center in atlanta. thank you very much. we mentioned the city of beaumont, texas, has lost its water supply after pumps failed in the floodwaters. for more, drew griffin is live just outside beaumont. hats off to you going from reporter to rescue worker. of utmost importance is the water supply. what do we know? reporter: the city sent out a notice last night about 12:30 a.m. that it lost its main pumping station right on the natches river. the other two main sources of water have already gone out. those were groundwater wells. what s first of all, when you woke up this morning, you turned on the spigots.