New Worries About Storm Damage as Beaumont’s Drinking Water Shuts Off<br />• Tom Bossert, the White House official who is spearheading the administration’s storm response, estimated<br />that 100,000 houses in Texas and Louisiana have been damaged or destroyed, and said Mr. Trump will seek billions in aid in the coming weeks.<br />The city manager, Kyle Hayes, said at a midday news conference<br />that he would not be able to assess flood damage to the city’s water pumps, or give a timeline for fixing them, until water began to recede, which he said would happen no earlier than Saturday.<br />Christus Southeast Texas-St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont decided not to evacuate,<br />but until the city water supply resumes, it will only admit new patients who need critical or emergency care, officials there said.<br />Taps in Beaumont ran dry, and officials there said they could not predict when homes<br />and businesses in the city of almost 120,000 residents would have running water again.<br />“We are here today, we will be here tomorrow and we will be here every day until this city<br />and this state and this region rebuild bigger and better than ever before.”<br />About 21,000 federal workers have been mobilized in response to the storm<br />and Congress is expected to debate passage of a multibillion-dollar emergency aid package in the coming weeks.<br />Houston fire officials said they would begin going door to door to search for victims, a process that could take up to two weeks.
