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Houston TV station evacuates to higher ground as floodwater rushes in

HOUSTON — Tropical Storm Harvey has forced a Houston television station to evacuate to higher round as rising floodwater overtook their offices. Reporters...
KHOU flooding

HOUSTON — Tropical Storm Harvey has forced a Houston television station to evacuate to higher round as rising floodwater overtook their offices.

Reporters and editors at KHOU, a local CBS affiliate, on Sunday tweeted photos and videos of flooding inside the station’s lobby.

“My last look at the KHOU Channel 11 lobby before it was flooded by Harvey,” tweeted the station’s managing editor, Bill Bishop. In the video, water is shown streaming in through closed doors and swallowing the legs of chair and tables.

“Water has risen a foot in 15 min,” tweeted KHOU weatherman Blake Mathews. “I’m one of the last in the building. God help us.”

Bishop said on Twitter that crews found a “temporary home” at the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.

As the station evacuated, reporter Brandi Smith anchored coverage from outside on city roadways.

She said the station’s signal had cut out.

Smith also posted a video on Facebook of rescue crews pulling a truck driver from a semi that had become enveloped in water on a highway.

“I flagged them down, told them about the situation, and now they are here, saving this man’s life,” Smith says in the video.

During the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a Fox network affiliate in New Orleans, WVUE, was taken off the air for two weeks. WVUE was forced to move to a sister station in Mobile, Alabama to continue broadcasting, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported at the time.

The newspaper said flooding from Katina “swamped” the station’s transmitter and filled its offices with “waist-high water.”

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