Hurricane Harvey dealt a beating to prison and jail facilities in southeast Texas, triggering evacuations, marooning staff and depriving prisoners of toilets and running water as it cut a bruising path across the state.
Thousands of inmates remained in limbo Monday, including hundreds who fled rising floodwaters only to be taken to a Navasota facility a federal judge had deemed too dangerously hot for inmates with medical conditions.
The crisis now centers on Beaumont, where flooding compromised the water supply at three federal and three state prisons inside the city limits. While city officials scrambled to get treatment facilities up and running, many correctional officers couldn't cross the swollen Neches River to get to their jobs.
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