LIBERTY, Texas - Mary Wakefield, 79, was sitting next to her husband's wheelchair in a church auditorium in this flooded city, when she looked up to see Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Cisneros had just flown from Houston in an Army helicopter to tour some of the worst flooding in southeast Texas, north and east of Houston.
Waters that had paralyzed portions of eastern Texas, claiming 15 lives, had begun to recede north and west of Houston, while flooding fed by runoff continued.
Wakefield's home and her children's homes were flooded.
She had moved her husband, A.L. Wakefield, 83, to a nursing home. But when waters came surging into downtown Liberty threatening the nursing home early Thursday, he was taken to a church with other frail, elderly residents.
"I don't have anybody to help me," Wakefield told Cisneros. "We've got water in our house."
Wakefield's complaint was shared by most in Liberty, which was flooded suddenly when waters poured over earthen levees and bubbled up through storm sewers. At least 3,000 homes were flooded in Liberty County.
"Imagine the plight of these two folks," Cisneros said. "He's been disrupted, their house is underwater, their children's home is underwater. So where do they go?"
It was from the air the devastation was most apparent. The view from several hundred feet up in a Black Hawk helicopter showed swaths of muddy brown on the swollen Trinity and San Jacinto rivers, the main flooding bodies of water, which empty into the Gulf of Mexico near Houston.
Hundreds of houses could be seen surrounded by water, many of them submerged to the second floor.
Farm fields were drenched, and many major highways - including U.S. 90, the main route through Liberty - were narrowed to one lane or even closed: "It's almost like seeing a ghost town," Cisneros said as police on an airboat took him down a 20-block stretch of Main Street that had just flooded.
"It's like a small town set piece."
Boats of all descriptions, but primarily small johnboats and flat-bottomed skiffs, carried homeowners trying to get out their last belongings in case the water begins rising again.
And, perhaps strangest of all, patterns of flooded streets could be seen from the air - even the white lines painted on them - through several feet of the muddy water.
Cisneros spoke to officials, nursing home residents, police and homeowners, promising at least five disaster assistance centers - integrated offices where all kinds of federal and state aid will be offered - would open by midday today.
Earlier, a pipeline burst in the San Jacinto River, starting a gasoline and oil fire on several barges and on the water. At least 59 people were treated for injuries.
Transportation Secretary Federico Pena took a separate helicopter tour, viewing the burning pipeline and then promising that aid for rebuilding transportation systems would be released immediately. In 26 disaster-struck counties, 76 roads were still closed.
Cisneros predicts a long period of recovery.
"I just feel compelled to warn them about the road ahead," he said. "There will be mountains and there will be valleys. . . . It just takes your whole life apart."
