HOUSTON – Houston Mayor John Whitmire provided an update on the city’s recovery efforts following Thursday’s deadly storm.
Whitmire said the city is still in a locally declared disaster situation and said Northwest Houston, the Heights, the Central Business District, and the East End is where the worst of the damage occurred.
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Whitmire said municipal courts will not have court on Monday.
The mayor asks people to please continue to minimize their travels in the city as there are still severe challenges with streetlights.
Whitmire says there are 2,500 traffic lights in the city. Of those, 401 were impacted by the storm. 292 have no power and another 64 are flashing red. 45 had severe damage.
Whitmire also announced an exclusion zone in downtown. This is an area that will be barricaded to allow workers to repair broken windows and Whitmire says falling glass is still a danger in this area.
“Workers will be in this footprint, working on broken windows, there’s still dangers downtown due to flying glass, they’re restoring the glass, workers will be present,” he said.
The exclusion area covers a roughly six block region from Louisiana Street to Travis Street and from McKinney Street to Polk Street.
HPD and Texas DPS will be in this area to enforce the exclusion zone. Whitmire did not say how long they expect the exclusion zone to be in place.