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Ike barrels toward Texas

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HOUSTON - A monster-sized Hurricane Ike bore down on the Texas coast late Friday, threatening to rattle the sparkling skyscrapers of America's fourth-largest city, shut down the heart of the U.S oil industry for days and obliterate waterfront towns already flooded with waist-high water.
Though nearly 1 million people evacuated coastal communities in the days leading up to the storm, tens of thousands ignored calls to leave and decided to tough it out. But as wind-whipped floodwaters began crashing into coastal homes, many changed their minds. Galveston fire crews rescued more tha
n 300 people who were walking through flooded streets, clutching clothes and other belongings as they tried to wade to safety. "We were going street by street seeing people who were trying to escape the flood waters," Fire Chief Michael Varela said. "I'm assuming these were people who made the mist
ake of staying." At 600 miles across, the storm was nearly as big as Texas itself, and threatened to give the state its worst pounding in a generation. It was on track to crash ashore early Saturday near Galveston, the same site that suffered the nation's worst natural disaster when a legendary sto
rm struck without warning and killed 6,000 more than a century ago. Officials were growing increasingly worried about the stalwarts, and many communities imposed curfews to discourage looters. Authorities in three counties alone said roughly 90,000 stayed behind, despite a warning from forecasters
that many of those in one- or two-story homes on the coast faced "certain death." With heavy bands of rain and high winds moving in, rescue crews were forced to retreat and leave the stubborn to fend for themselves. Firefighters left a boat and yacht warehouse in Galveston in flames because water w
as too high for fire trucks to navigate. "I believe in the man up there, God," said William Steally, a 75-year-old retiree who planned to ride out the storm in Galveston without his wife or sister-in-law. "I believe he will take care of me." A disabled 584-foot freighter with 22 men aboard was lef
t tossing about in the waves because winds were too dangerous for aircraft. Late Friday, the Coast Guard reported the crew was still safe after weathering the brunt of the storm, and a tugboat was set to arrive noon Saturday. Power was knocked out to hundreds of thousands of customers in Louisiana
and along the Texas coast. That number that was expected to climb quickly throughout the night, according to Centerpoint Energy, the primary electricity provider for the region. As of 9 p.m. EDT, Ike was centered about 70 miles southeast of Galveston, moving at 13 mph. It was close to a Category 3
storm with winds of 110 mph, and was expected to strengthen by the time the eye hit land. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore somewhere near Galveston early Saturday and pass almost directly over Houston. Because of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its largely unp
rotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall of water two stories high — 20 to 25 feet — at the coast. Bachir Annane, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division,
said Ike's surge could be catastrophic, and like nothing the Texas coast has ever seen. "Wind doesn't tell the whole story," Annane said. "It's the size that tells the story, and this is a giant." The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5 million prepackaged meals were being sent
to the region, along with more than 230 generators and 5.6 million liters of water. At least 3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana. Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked President Bush for a "wide-reaching emergency declaration" in all 88 counties being affected, a move designed to secur
e emergency funding to help defray storm costs. Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 peo
ple and causing $2 billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane. Authorities instructed most of the city's 2 million residents to just hunker down to avoid highway gridloc
k. If Ike is as bad as feared, the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston. The port is the nation's second-busiest, and is an economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consu
mer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products.

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