Saturday, September 13, 2008

Crews fan out in Texas to assess damage

MSNBC.com


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At least two deaths in the state are being blamed on the storm
The Associated Press
updated 2:49 p.m. ET, Sat., Sept. 13, 2008
HOUSTON - Rescue crews navigated flooded and debris-strewn streets Saturday to search for those who insisted on staying and riding out a fierce Hurricane Ike, which shattered skyscraper windows, cut power to millions and flooded thousands of homes as it sloshed across the Texas coast.

State and local officials began searching for survivors by late morning, just hours after Ike roared ashore at Galveston with 110 mph winds, heavy rains and towering waves. Overnight, dispatchers received thousands of calls from frightened residents who bucked mandatory orders to leave as the storm closed in.

Rescue crews were frustrated, but vowed to get to the more than 140,000 people who stubbornly stayed behind as soon as they could.

"This is a democracy," said Mark Miner, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry. "Local officials who can order evacuations put out very strong messages. Gov. Perry put out a very strong warning. But you can't force people to leave their homes. They made a decision to ride out the storm. Our prayers are with them."

Sedonia Owen, 75, and her son, Lindy McKissick, defied evacuation orders in Galveston because they wanted to protect their neighborhood from possible looters. She was watching floodwaters recede from her front porch Saturday morning, armed with a shotgun.

"My neighbors told me, 'You've got my permission. Anybody who goes into my house, you can shoot them,'" said Owen.

Bush declares disaster
President Bush declared a major disaster in his home state of Texas and ordered immediate federal aid. Officials were encouraged that the storm surge topped out at only 13.5 feet — far lower than the catastrophic 20-to-25 foot wall of water forecasters had feared, but major roads were washed out near Galveston, and the damage was still immense.

Residents of Houston emerged to take in the damage, even as glass from the JPMorgan Chase Tower — the state's tallest building at 75 stories — continued to rain on streets below. Trees were uprooted in the streets, road signs mangled by wind.

"I think we're like at ground zero," said Mauricio Diaz, 36, as he walked along Texas Avenue across the street from the Chase building. Metal blinds from the tower dotted the street, along with red seat cushions, pieces of a wood desk and office documents marked "highly confidential."


Houston Police officer Joseph Ledet was out patrolling the streets early Saturday, but stopped and simply stared as he approached Chase Tower. "It looks like a bomb went off over there," he said. "Just destruction."

Shortly before noon, Houston police cars prowled downtown, ordering citizens off the streets over bullhorns: "Please clear the area! Go home!"

The storm, which had killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before making landfall in the United States, claimed at least two lives in Texas, but the toll was likely to rise. A woman died early Saturday when a tree fell on her home near Pinehurst in Montgomery County, crushing her as she slept. A 19-year-old man also slipped off a jetty near Corpus Christi and apparently washed away.

FEMA ready to roll
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said search and rescue teams were at the ready in Houston, poised to go to the aid of those stranded by Hurricane Ike. At a sports arena, tractor-trailers and large sport utility vehicles sat idle as the vast storm churned northward across the state.

The storm, nearly as big as Texas itself, blasted a 500-mile stretch of coastline in Louisiana and Texas. It breached levees, flooded roads and led more than 1 million people to evacuate and seek shelter inland.

South of Galveston, authorities said 67-year-old Ray Wilkinson was the only resident who didn't evacuate from Surfside Beach, population 800. He was drunk and waving when authorities reached him on Saturday morning.

"He kinda drank his way through the night," Mayor Larry Davison said.

Some homes were destroyed, but the storm was not as bad for Surfside Beach as Davison had feared. "But it's pretty bad," he said. "It'll take six months to clean it up."

Farther up the coast, much of Bridge City and downtown Orange were under up to 8 feet of water and rescue teams in dump trucks were plowing through in an effort to reach families trapped on roofs and inside attics.

"Right now we're pretty devastated," Orange County Judge Carl Thibodeaux said. "We're still watching the water steadily rise slowly. Hopefully it's going to crest soon."

Thibodeaux said Ike was not causing as much structural damage as Rita, but that rising water was making the effects more devastating. Thibodeaux and other officials were stuck inside an emergency operation center, where he said the water outside was at least 5 feet and rising.

Storm surge causing problems
In Louisiana, Ike's storm surge inundated thousands of homes and businesses. In Plaquemines Parish, near New Orleans, a sheriff's spokesman said levees were overtopped and floodwaters were higher than either hurricane Katrina or Rita.

"The storm surge we're experiencing, on both sides of the Mississippi River, is higher than anything we've seen before," Marie said.

As Ike moved north later Saturday morning, the storm dropped to a Category 1 hurricane, then a tropical storm. At 2 p.m. EDT, the storm's center was just southeast of Palestine, Texas, and moving toward the north near 16 mph. Winds were still at 60 mph, and tornadoes were possible.

Because Ike was so huge, hurricane winds pounded the coast for hours before landfall and continued through the morning, with the worst winds and rain after the center came ashore, forecasters said.

"For us, it was a 10," Galveston Fire Chief Mike Varela said. Varela said firefighters responded to dozens of rescue calls before suspending operations Friday night, including from people who changed their minds and fled at the last minute.

Ike landed near the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants, and already, prices were reacting. Gas prices nationwide rose nearly 6 cents a gallon to $3.733, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Some feared worries about a prolonged shutdown in the Gulf of Mexico could send prices surging back toward all-time highs of $4 per gallon, reached over the summer when oil prices neared $150 a barrel.

More than 3 million customers lost power in southeast Texas, and some 140,000 more in Louisiana. That's in addition to the 60,000 still without power from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav. Suppliers warned it could be weeks before all service was restored.

But there was good news: A stranded freighter with 22 men aboard made it through the brunt of the storm safely, and a tugboat was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County gave birth to a baby girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades.

'I kept them here'
Steven Rushing, a commercial fishmerman, tried to ride out the storm with his wife and several family members, including his pregnant 17-year-old daughter, in their one-story brick home on Galveston Island.

Early Saturday, they watched the water rise and donned life jackets. When the water reached the TV, about 4 feet high, Rushing's plan was to kick out a window so they could tie themselves to a tree and await rescue.

But then he noticed a sudden calm, apparently the hurricane's eye passing over. He loaded his family into a 17-foot ski boat and headed for the San Luis resort, the headquarters for emergency personnel about 20 blocks away. It took 20 minutes to float 16 blocks before the boat ran aground. Then the Rushings sprinted for safety, guided by lights from police responding to a 911 call made from the boat.

"I'm drained. I'm beat up," Rushing said later Saturday morning. "My family is traumatized. I kept them here, promising them everything would be alright, but this is the real deal and I won't stay no more."

One Galveston landmark destroyed by the storm was the 79-year-old Balinese Room
a famous Texas nightclub where Frank Sinata and Bob Hope once performed.

The popular dance and gambling hall was washed away by battering storm surge as Ike roared ashore early Saturday.

Erected on Galveston's sea wall, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

The Balinese Room survived Hurricane Carla in 1961 and Alicia in 1983. But Ike proved too much for the Texas icon as battering waves ripped the building apart.

Dominque Joha, who managed the Balinese Room for the past year, says she is trying to absorb the blow, adding, "I gave so much of my heart to this building."

Oil and gas industry impact
Much of the region's industrial recovery will depend on how quickly power companies can restore electricity; that, in turn, will depend on how quickly the utilities can get employees back to work.

"I received a call from one of my employees, who was evacuated to San Antonio. He was just informed that his house was totally destroyed," said Bill Reid, the CEO of Ohmstede, which builds and repairs refineries. Reid, who lives in Kemah, Texas, about 35 miles south of Houston, said his town was without power and water, and still had 15 feet of flooding.

The port of Houston, the nation's second-largest, was without power Saturday but expects to reopen Monday morning if the Coast Guard finds no obstacles in the shipping lanes. Some empty cargo containers were blown about, but not too far.

"All the terminals did very well and we had only very minor damage, like fencing being blown down," said port spokeswoman Argentina James.

Refineries as far east as Louisiana were affected by the storm, however. The tourist island town of Galveston was flooded and office buildings in downtown Houston were damaged, but it could have been worse.

"It appears that, at least from our facility and operations standpoint, the impact is a little less than we did anticipate," said Mike Smid, chief executive of trucking company YRC North America, which runs Yellow and Roadway lines. The company evacuated its 900 employees ahead of the storm.

Preliminary estimates put the damage at $8 billion or more, but a precise accounting of the storm's wrath was far from complete.


© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26637482?GT1=43001


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