Harvey flooding: Mother overcome with emotion as she's reunited with daughter

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Friday, September 1, 2017
Mother bursts into tears during post-Harvey reunion
The missing persons table at the George R. Brown Convention Center has been home to happy reunions, including one mom who burst into tears.

HOUSTON -- After getting separated because of Hurricane Harvey, one mom was so overcome at the sight of her young daughter that she burst into tears.

"It's a wonderful feeling," Shikisha Binder said as she held her young daughter close.

After finding shelter from the storm, Binder had been rushed to the Emergency Room for care. In the chaos someone at the shelter assured her that her daughter was being watched.

"When I came back, I didn't see her. I'm panicking," she said.

They were reunited at the missing persons table.

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This family experienced just one of the happy endings at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Its missing persons table is operated by Houston Police and the Texas Center for the Missing, a nonprofit. Officials said that 71 percent of the missing persons cases there were resolved as of Thursday.

Another of those tearful reunions? Kara Flores and her brother, who has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He had been missing since the beginning of the storm.

"My parents are sick with grief because he's the baby," she said. "I thought, 'It's a long shot. There's no way I'm going to find him.'"

But a neighbor saw him in a background of a news report at the convention center, so she made her way there, and the missing persons table got them connected.

"It's a miracle that things fell into place," she said.