In Beaumont, emergency workers rescued a young girl who was floating in the floodwaters, suffering from hypothermia and clinging to her mother’s body. The mother died, but the girl was in stable condition, the police said.

The mother, identified by the police as Colette Sulcer, 41, had been driving down a service road when she pulled into a parking lot and got stuck. Ms. Sulcer and her daughter left the car, but were swept away, floating about half a mile, the police said. A group of emergency officials found the pair just before they were swept under a trestle. Had they floated under it, the workers would not have been able to save the child, the police said.

Local news reports from Port Arthur showed that shelters and homes were flooded, and residents and reporters said that there were not enough people answering emergency calls.

Rain fell with astonishing intensity in the county, which is home to about 254,000 people. Between 2 p.m. Tuesday and 1 a.m. Wednesday local time, almost 19 inches of rain hit Jack Brooks Regional Airport, between Beaumont and Port Arthur.

“Water’s still rising in most locations,” said Jonathan Brazzell, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service. “I don’t know what else to say, it’s just bad. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The rainfall total since the storm began reached more than 47 inches on Wednesday, and will climb. Rain was forecast to continue steadily through Wednesday and Thursday, before easing off on Friday.

Austin and Dallas prepare to absorb thousands of schoolchildren.

The cities of Austin and Dallas were expecting to absorb thousands of schoolchildren displaced by the storm, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 68 large urban school districts. In both cities, school officials were waiving certain paperwork requirements, including immunization records and birth certificates, in order to quickly enroll displaced children, he said.

Robyn L. Harris, a spokeswoman for the Dallas Independent School District, said that the students would be classified as homeless and that the district was ready to provide psychological counseling and health services.

The Houston Independent School District remained closed, but announced that when school resumes, all students would receive three meals a day, regardless of a family’s income, for the school year.

Mr. Casserly has been working with urban districts in Texas over the last week and also assisted school officials after past disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York. He said he expected Congress to pass special disaster relief legislation, but that after previous catastrophes, the federal funding provided for schools did not come close to covering the costs associated with getting classes back up and running.

Houston’s mayor pushes for a return to normalcy.

Mr. Turner, the Houston mayor, said Wednesday evening that a citywide curfew would take effect again from midnight until 5 a.m. He said heavy debris pick up began Wednesday and regular trash collection would resume on Thursday. “We’re going to do our very best to push the pace,” he said.

Mr. Turner said he wanted the Astros baseball team to play a scheduled home game on Friday.

But thousands of people remained in shelters, still seeking information about their families and friends, and about the state of their homes and their city.

Officials also said that about 75,000 CenterPoint Energy customers remained without power as of late Wednesday — down from about 100,000.

Though the inundation from days of record rainfall has begun to recede, swollen rivers still have not crested in some places. Art Acevedo, the police chief, said that 20 people who had been reported missing since the start of the storm remained unaccounted for.