Friday evening, Hurricane Harvey dropped more than 15 trillion gallons of rain bringing catastrophic consequences to Houston, America’s fourth biggest city where 6.8 million people live — creating more than 5500 refugees already, officials have said.
This hurricane started from Texas with 130 mile-an-hour wind, dropping more rain than this city has seen in a while.
Pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Joel Osteen on Tuesday night issued a statement that revealed that the Church doors are open to thousands of people affected.
Joel tweeted that he and his wife Victoria “care deeply about our fellow Houstonians,” adding that “Lakewood’s doors are open and we are receiving anyone who needs shelter.”
In regard to earlier criticism that the church had turned a deaf ear to the emergency, Lakewood Church spokesman Don Iloff told Washington Post the building itself had been flooded, with water getting close to spilling over the facility’s floodgate.
Taking in a crowd of storm evacuees over the weekend would’ve been unsafe, Iloff said, although he maintained that the church’s doors have always been open.
By Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of volunteers waited in line to check into Lakewood Church to help organize blankets, clothes, diapers and other supplies to be shipped off to nearby Center, where displaced residents have flocked over the past few days, The Washington Post reported.
According to The Guardian, Houston emergency services have received nearly 6,000 appeals for rescues.
The megachurch facility, formerly the 16,000-seat Compaq Center that was home to the Houston Rockets, was sold to Lakewood Church for $7.5 million in 2010, according to the Houston Chronicle.
President Donald Trump appeared in Texas yesterday as officials struggled to manage an unprecedented deluge delivered by Hurricane Harvey.
Addressing first responders he said: “We want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at in five years, in 10 years from now, as this is the way to do it. I won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that, we’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”
By Paul Dennis.
