again, that moment just a couple of hours ago. cnn s ed is joining us live now from galveston, ed, wow. describe what that moment was like. oh, absolutely surreal. you know, we ve been standing here, and we are kind of where we started the day. standing on interstate 45, which is just staggering to think about when you this is i-45 northbound, pretty much i think about half way between galveston island and the city of houston just over that overpass where you see a lot of the emergency vehicles. all of this area around us just swamped in water. and that neighborhood that you saw we were shooting in is just behind this tree line over here. and there has been an endless stream of volunteers who have shown up with their own boats to help rescue and pull people out from so many subdivisions. at one point, just down this little waterway here which is essentially the onramp to the
here to stage. here are some boats over here. this has been going on for hours. they ve been shuttling back and forth from the hotel. we went on one rescue just a short time ago right to the lobby of the omni hotel where the water was basically to people s thighs and pulling people out. here s a snippet of what we saw a short time ago tonight. take a look at this. this is the entrance to the lobby and you re witnessing a rescue live. we went over here by bolts. look at how deep the water is, it s to people s thighs and here is a group of people going on to the boat right now. this is brian meadows. his partner seth roberts is here in the green shirt. they re helping people on to the boat. we ll talk to them. we ve been at the staging area where we ve launched these boats for the last hour and a half and two hours.
you ve got the task one emergency search and rescue teams that are here. heavy earth moving equipment is in here to scleclear the street. you ve got buses taking people away because essentially the mayor and everyone else has said this community is not livable at this point. so if you rode it out, you got to get out now because you can t exist without electricity and clean water. otherwise, if you are out of town, don t come back. we re weeks way way from electricity here. martin savage in rockport, texas. thank you. as we go to break real quick, i want to show you some pictures of a flooding rescue that just happened in houston. a helicopter at work in the flood zone. we re back in just a moment. it s ok that everybody ignores me when i drive. it s fine. because i get a safe driving bonus check every six months i m accident free. because i don t use my cellphone when i m driving. even though my family does, and leaves me all alone. here s something else. i don t share it with mom. i
water rescue vehicles as well, as well as cots for those in our shelters. i want to thank all of the other mayors, san antonio, l.a., dallas, all of them have indicated that they will join in and asseist and i certainly appreciate their support on multiple levels. let me call on the chief for comments that he might have. thank you, mr. mayor. so again, i want to echo the mayor s sentiment. we really appreciate everybody that s stepping up to help us today and throughout this event that we re trying to manage here at the city. we have, as of right now, we have imagined to cut most of our calls for service holding in half. i think we re down to 400, last check through our cad system and verified 105 calls for water rescue. we re steadily working and whittling away at all of those people, all of you all who have
working with us in terms of identifying people who are stranded maybe on their roofs. 16 of the 22 are from the coast guard. they have been flying about. and in many cases actually taking people off of the root, taking them to some other location. certainly want to thank the coast guard for its work. the fema task team force is now on the ground as of today. fema has 16 assisting in search and rescue. four of the teams consist of 80 members and two of the teams consist of 60 members. so they are assisting. with regards to additional assets, we re operating with 35 boats, high water rescue boats and then 93 dump trucks, high water rescues. 49 of the 39 came in today. 20 from the texas military and