哈维缓慢撤离德州,洪水威胁不减

The city of Houston will finally get some relief from historic rain Wednesday as Tropical Storm Harvey pulls away from east Texas and makes another landfall in neighboring Louisiana.

Forecasters expected the Houston area to get about two centimeters of new rainfall Wednesday and to have sunny skies and hot temperatures by Friday. The region will still be dealing with widespread flooding from the slow-moving storm that has dropped more than 130 centimeters in some places since Thursday.

The National Hurricane Center said the storm could drop 15 to 30 centimeters of rain on southwestern Louisiana as it finally moves inland.

Local and state officials in Texas said rescuers had taken more than 13,000 people from flooded homes, and thousands of people were staying in shelters set up at Houston's convention center, the arena for the Houston Rockets basketball team and the stadium where the Houston Texans football team plays.

With so many people away from their homes and scattered reports of looting, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner instituted an overnight curfew starting Wednesday morning in order to prevent "potential criminal acts."

At least 13 deaths have been reported in connection with the storm. Authorities have not yet confirmed a number that high, but have said casualty figures could rise once the floodwaters begin to recede.

Elaine Duke, the acting head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said during a visit to Texas on Tuesday that the biggest challenge remains search and rescue efforts.

Duke was one of several officials who flew to Texas along with President Donald Trump to meet with local and state leaders and survey the response to the storm. Trump said the recovery effort, which has been estimated at tens of billions of dollars, will probably be one of the most expensive the United States has seen.

Visiting an emergency operations center in the Texas capital, Austin, Trump said his administration and Congress are going to come up with the "right solution" to help storm victims.

Trump also went to Corpus Christi, where the storm hit the Texas coast, and said there he wants the federal government's response to be "better than ever before."

The president waved a Texas state flag as he spoke to cheering supporters, calling the storm "epic." He added, "...but it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything."