preacher joel osteen and his church has opened their doors to offer shelter to those in need. it just took a couple days longer. they said the building was inaccessible because of floot water. osteen did the rounds on breakfast tv in the u.s. on wednesday, trying to explain what happened, mostly repeating the same reasons why the church remained closed like here on good morning america because no one had asked to open up the building. the city has a shelter four miles from here. we work with the city all the time. when their shelter was totally full, they started bringing people over here. and here we are again today. then there was a safety issue. here is osteen on cnn. we had floodgates behind me over to the right, it was within a foot of that. so there was a safety issue the first day or two. same thing on nbc s today show, all about safety because the building had flooded before,
welcome back to our continuing coverage. i m george howell, live in houston, texas. throughout the southeast part of the state, rescue missions are ongoing and the scenes are dramatic. for a fifth day now, emergency workers and volunteers went door to door, answering calls for help in port arthur, texas. patients were evacuated from a nursing home. the mayor of that city says the entire town is under water. the u.s. navy flew search and rescue missions over beaumont, texas, as they lifted 25 men, women, and children from the floodwaters. and then look at this, this video of jonathan evolea, carrying an elderly woman on his back out of her home. he and his brother joshua were in that neighborhood that had been cleared out when they found two other elderly people and two children also inside that home. so, john, the rescues continue, the stories of survival are
because we have we ve just been really blessed, honestly. we had neighbors getting out of the neighborhood in helicopters and on boats, and having to wade through shoulder-deep water. so i feel very lucky that we were able to get out in time and still have two cars. because most of our neighbors have lost all their vehicles. so many people have lost so many things and i feel like we were really lucky. and we have our animals. we have a lot of neighbors that had to leave their animals, and the neighborhood is just completely destroyed right now. i probably have potentially about six feet of water in my house. and it s a one-story house, and with that much water, over that amount of time, it s going to have to be taken down to the studs. and we don t even know if we re all going to rebuild or not. that s what we have to figure out. lakeisha, we appreciate you taking time to share your story. we wish you the very best. i know as you and your family go through the process of
it has affected schools. it has affected businesses. it s affected the airlines. and they re saying that the flooding has destroyed or severely damaged nearly a million homes across the region. now that area of low pressure is transitioning more towards pakistan and coastal areas there could see significant flooding. we ve seen significant flooding since august in nepal, bangladesh, and also portions of northeastern india. george, back to you. karen, thank you so much. still ahead, we talk with an islamic leader here in houston whose organization has opened as emergency shelters for flood victims. as we go to break, before and after images of interstate 10, about 120 kilometers east of houston, this is the main highway into new orleans. the water is so deep and choppy in places that it now resembles an ocean covered with white caps. when you have allergies,
and i needed to make sure that we were able to get out in time so that he could get proper medical care if needed. i didn t want to get stranded and i didn t want him to have the stress of having to potentially wade in water to get out. we were able to get our initial car out, and when i saw that the roads were clear enough, we then went back and got a second car. so thankfully we haven t lost either one of our cars. we were only originally able to take one of my dogs. so we then went on a rescue mission later in the day, that day on saturday, to go get the second dog. but that was more difficult, because by that time, more things started flooding in the neighborhood. so we had to go up wrong streets and go in wrong entrances in order to get to him, but we did. so at that point, by saturday, i had all of my living souls with me in the hotel.