How To Help Hurricane Harvey Victims
Hurricane Harvey was downgraded to a tropical storm Saturday, but it’s destruction has left hundreds of thousands across the Texas coast without electrical power and has caused significant damage to cities and counties since hitting landfall late Friday night.
Photos and videos of the damage have poured into media reports as well as social media outlets like Twitter. And while many around the country cannot head down to southeastern Texas to directly help, there are other ways to aid Harvey’s victims.
The American Red Cross has set up a donation page in order to raise funds to help victims. The page allows donations through credit card or PayPal.
Red Cross volunteers have already amassed to reach victims, and the organization’s volunteer sign-up page can be found here.
The Salvation Army also has a donation page here.
The South Texas Blood and Tissue Center started to prepare for Harvey before it Friday, and the center is encouraging those who are fit and of age to donate blood—or who have a parental consent form—and help trauma centers that have seen an influx of patients because of Harvey.
The cities most affected, thus far, include Rockport, Texas, while Harvey now has a "target triangle” of Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi that will see days of heavy rain that are expected to cause “catastrophic” flooding, NBC News reported.
With more than 300,000 people losing access to power, the total rainfall in the affected areas is predicted to reach a total of between two to three feet.
While Harvey’s wind speed dropped to 70 miles per hour, well below the previous 130 mph winds that made it a Category 4 hurricane and the worst to hit the country in decades, it has still caused significant damage.
Rockport, located about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi, has people trapped inside a senior housing complex and part of its local high school has collapsed, the city’s mayor said according to the Houston Chronicle.
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