Houston battles massive floods, Trump set for Tuesday Texas trip

The city's two main airports suspended all commercial flights and two hospitals were forced to evacuate patients. A local television station also was knocked off the air.

At least three people have been killed so far.

President Donald Trump, who had said he did not want to disrupt emergency efforts with a visit, is planning to head to the disaster zone on Tuesday, the White House announced.

Rising waters from Harvey - which crashed into the Texas Gulf Coast late Friday as a huge Category 4 hurricane - inundated roads throughout the area, affecting every major freeway in Houston and hamstringing efforts to move people to safety.

"It's crazy to see the roads you're driving on every day just completely under water," Houston resident John Travis told AFP.

Another city resident, Brit Dreger, said: "It doesn't look like we're going anywhere for a while."

Overwhelmed emergency services warned residents to head for high ground or climb onto rooftops - not into attics - so they could be seen by rescue helicopters. More than 1,500 rescues had been made so far.

"We are going on fumes & our hearts ache for community we serve, but we will not stop!" said Houston police chief Art Acevedo.

Emergency 911 operators in Houston received 56,000 calls in a 15-hour span - seven times more than in a usual full day.

"It is bad and growing worse," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, adding that the storm had already inflicted billions of dollars in damage.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner dismissed the idea that evacuations should have been ordered sooner.

"You cannot put, in the city of Houston, 2.3 million people on the road. That is dangerous," Turner told reporters. "You issue an evacuation order and put everybody on the highway - you really are asking for a major calamity."

'LIFE AND SAFETY'

Trump, who spent the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat, had said he would visit the Lone Star State as soon as he could "without causing disruption."

"The focus must be on life and safety," he said in a series of tweets about the disaster, his first major domestic challenge since taking office in January.

Later, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the visit would take place on Tuesday.

At least three people have died since Harvey made landfall late on Friday, spawning tornadoes and lashing east and central Texas with torrential rains, but authorities said they could not yet confirm other possible fatalities.

In Houston, a woman drowned when she left a car which had stalled in high water, and another man was found dead in a flooded Wal-Mart parking lot in the Galveston area, officials confirmed.

Local officials said Saturday one person was killed when a house caught fire in the Rockport area, where Harvey made landfall.

"The breadth and intensity of this rainfall are beyond anything experienced before," the National Weather Service said on Twitter.

Houston opened community centers to shelter people forced out of their homes, but the mayor appealed to residents to stay put and not call the 911 emergency line unless they faced a life-threatening situation.

"Even if there's a lull today, don't assume the storm is over," Turner said.

'I MIGHT HAVE LEFT SOONER'

The National Weather Service said more than two feet (60 centimetres) of rain fell in Houston and nearby Galveston in a 24-hour period. Another 20 inches were expected.

Flooding was expected to worsen as Harvey, the most powerful storm to hit the United States mainland since 2005, lingers over the area.

Harvey ripped off roofs, flipped mobile homes and left hundreds of thousands of people in the dark on the Gulf Coast, home to some of the country's most important oil refineries.