Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Splendora, that's up U.S. Hwy 59, right?
You'll be in the right-front quadrant of the hurricane, so beware. Especially of tornadoes. And how close are you to a stream?
Tornado watch inside the red box.
T.S. Ike
- Thread starter Quasar1011
- Start date
Splendora, that's up U.S. Hwy 59, right?
You'll be in the right-front quadrant of the hurricane, so beware. Especially of tornadoes. And how close are you to a stream?
Tornado watch inside the red box.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
Its not the wind force but the size thats is deadly.
I hope that the people heeded the mandatory evacuation for those areas of the coast and islands
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
No, no, no! Hurricane Camille in 1969 was not as big size-wise as Ike, yet it struck land as a category 5 storm with sustained winds of 200 miles per hour!
Here's a couple of photos of Camille:
Hurricane Allen in 1980 was bigger than Ike. Does that mean global warming was worse in 1980? Of course not! Here's how big Allen was (you can also see hurricane Isis in the Pacific- Mexico was surrounded!)
Camille was more powerfall at landfall than any other storm striking the USA in 100 years. Does that mean global warming peaked in 1969? No!
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
To be fair,Quasar, he said it was the way we're getting a lot of them at once that's a proof of global warming.
Certainly we've had intense or apparently intense years recently. Probably media attention has helped with that, but certainly:
-From 1928 to 2007, there were 31 Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic. 8 of them - over 25% - happened in the past five years (2003-2007)
-From 1953 to 2000, 50 storm names were retired. From 2001 to 2007, there were 20.
-Out of the 10 most powerful atlantic hurricanes on record, 5 occured in the past five years (Ivan of 2004, Dean of 2007, and 2005's hellborn trio)
-An average season from 1950 to 2000 was 9.6 storms, 5.9 hurricanes, and 2.3 major hurricanes. In other words, 2006 (10-5-2) was not a "particularly weak" season - it was almost a dead-on-average season! Compared to everything else around it, though, 10-5-2 is weak. (16-7-3 in 2003, 15-9-6 in 2004, 28-15-7 of course in 2005, 15-6-2 in 2007, etc).
While blaming global warming is premature (there is the theory that the Atlantic goes through cycles, and that's all we're seeing here), there IS a worrisome trend with regard to hurricane activity in the Atlantic in the past few years.
Certainly we've had intense or apparently intense years recently. Probably media attention has helped with that, but certainly:
-From 1928 to 2007, there were 31 Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic. 8 of them - over 25% - happened in the past five years (2003-2007)
-From 1953 to 2000, 50 storm names were retired. From 2001 to 2007, there were 20.
-Out of the 10 most powerful atlantic hurricanes on record, 5 occured in the past five years (Ivan of 2004, Dean of 2007, and 2005's hellborn trio)
-An average season from 1950 to 2000 was 9.6 storms, 5.9 hurricanes, and 2.3 major hurricanes. In other words, 2006 (10-5-2) was not a "particularly weak" season - it was almost a dead-on-average season! Compared to everything else around it, though, 10-5-2 is weak. (16-7-3 in 2003, 15-9-6 in 2004, 28-15-7 of course in 2005, 15-6-2 in 2007, etc).
While blaming global warming is premature (there is the theory that the Atlantic goes through cycles, and that's all we're seeing here), there IS a worrisome trend with regard to hurricane activity in the Atlantic in the past few years.
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Ike Forces Shutdown of 19% of U.S. Refining Capacity (Update2)
By Jordan Burke
Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ike, which made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast today, caused more than 19 percent of the nation's refining capacity to close and may limit fuel deliveries across the country.
At least 13 refineries in Texas shut down as Ike approached. Gulf Coast refineries and ports are the source of about 50 percent of the fuel and crude used in the eastern half of the U.S. Plants operated by Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc were affected.
Gasoline shortages may occur across the southern U.S. up to Washington because of the closures caused by Hurricane Gustav and now Ike, Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability at the U.S. Department of Energy, said on a conference call yesterday.
``We expect to see constrained supplies of refined products,'' he said. ``The administration will utilize every tool at our disposal to lessen the likelihood of limited fuel supplies,'' including tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ike smashed into the Texas coast as a category 2 storm with winds almost 110 miles per hour (176 kilometers), making landfall in Galveston at 2:10 a.m. local time today. Ike's path toward Houston makes it the first storm to hit a major U.S. metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.
President George W. Bush today said the federal government was ``prepared to move'' quickly to help in recovery efforts from Hurricane Ike and said he has ordered federal authorities to guard against gasoline price gouging.
Idled Production
The storm idled about 98 percent of oil production and 94 percent of natural-gas output in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said yesterday. Gulf fields produce 1.3 million barrels oil a day, about a quarter of U.S. output, and 7.4 billion cubic feet of gas, 14 percent of the total, government data show.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, said today it plans to do a flyover of its Gulf of Mexico assets to assess any damage from Hurricane Ike, after the storm passes. Shell wants ``most notably'' to examine its Auger tension leg platform, the company said in a statement on its Web site.
Shell may redeploy some workers to Shell-operated assets that were not in the immediate path of Ike, the statement said.
``Once power and communications are restored at our facilities, then personnel can commence repairs, and where possible, conduct restart and production ramp up procedures,'' the company said. `Production ramp up at each facility will vary and could take from a few days to weeks.''
Calls for Conservation
Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. energy company, urged U.S. consumers outside the Gulf Coast region to conserve gasoline and other fuels to help avert shortages.
The company, in a statement on its Web site, said it's concerned about ``the potential impact of Hurricane Ike and the additional pressure it could have on an already stressed petroleum-distribution system.''
Gasoline futures traded in New York gained 3.1 percent this week. The futures rose 2.08 cents, or 0.8 percent, to settle at $2.7696 a gallon yesterday as the refineries closed.
CME Group Inc., the world's biggest futures exchange, is extending New York Mercantile Exchange electronic trading hours this weekend because of Ike. Trading will begin at 10 a.m. New York time on Sept. 14, earlier than the normal opening of 7 p.m.
Ike is similar to Hurricane Alicia in 1983, according to Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist at Planlytics Inc. in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
`Devastated' Infrastructure
``It took them over a year to get their feet on the ground again,'' he said. ``The refineries were down for months. Basically, the whole infrastructure around the Houston metropolitan area was devastated.''
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced the temporary shutdown of at least 20 U.S. refineries during August and September 2005, idling 30 percent of the nation's capacity. Most of those plants resumed operations within a few weeks of the storms.
Gasoline supplies across the southern and eastern U.S. may be disrupted by Ike, Rouiller said.
``We could have this capability lost for a long period of time,'' he said.
Exxon Mobil shut down its Baytown, Texas, refinery, the biggest in the U.S, with processing capacity of 590,500 barrels of oil a day, and its Beaumont plant, which can process 363,100 barrels a day, according to the company's Web site. Exxon is the world's largest oil company.
Valero, the largest U.S. refiner, closed three Texas oil refineries with a combined capacity of 589,000 barrels a day. They are the 294,000-barrel-a-day Port Arthur refinery, a Texas City plant with a capacity of 210,000 barrels and a Houston facility able to process 85,000 barrels, spokesman Bill Day said.
By Jordan Burke
Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ike, which made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast today, caused more than 19 percent of the nation's refining capacity to close and may limit fuel deliveries across the country.
At least 13 refineries in Texas shut down as Ike approached. Gulf Coast refineries and ports are the source of about 50 percent of the fuel and crude used in the eastern half of the U.S. Plants operated by Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc were affected.
Gasoline shortages may occur across the southern U.S. up to Washington because of the closures caused by Hurricane Gustav and now Ike, Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability at the U.S. Department of Energy, said on a conference call yesterday.
``We expect to see constrained supplies of refined products,'' he said. ``The administration will utilize every tool at our disposal to lessen the likelihood of limited fuel supplies,'' including tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ike smashed into the Texas coast as a category 2 storm with winds almost 110 miles per hour (176 kilometers), making landfall in Galveston at 2:10 a.m. local time today. Ike's path toward Houston makes it the first storm to hit a major U.S. metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.
President George W. Bush today said the federal government was ``prepared to move'' quickly to help in recovery efforts from Hurricane Ike and said he has ordered federal authorities to guard against gasoline price gouging.
Idled Production
The storm idled about 98 percent of oil production and 94 percent of natural-gas output in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said yesterday. Gulf fields produce 1.3 million barrels oil a day, about a quarter of U.S. output, and 7.4 billion cubic feet of gas, 14 percent of the total, government data show.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, said today it plans to do a flyover of its Gulf of Mexico assets to assess any damage from Hurricane Ike, after the storm passes. Shell wants ``most notably'' to examine its Auger tension leg platform, the company said in a statement on its Web site.
Shell may redeploy some workers to Shell-operated assets that were not in the immediate path of Ike, the statement said.
``Once power and communications are restored at our facilities, then personnel can commence repairs, and where possible, conduct restart and production ramp up procedures,'' the company said. `Production ramp up at each facility will vary and could take from a few days to weeks.''
Calls for Conservation
Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. energy company, urged U.S. consumers outside the Gulf Coast region to conserve gasoline and other fuels to help avert shortages.
The company, in a statement on its Web site, said it's concerned about ``the potential impact of Hurricane Ike and the additional pressure it could have on an already stressed petroleum-distribution system.''
Gasoline futures traded in New York gained 3.1 percent this week. The futures rose 2.08 cents, or 0.8 percent, to settle at $2.7696 a gallon yesterday as the refineries closed.
CME Group Inc., the world's biggest futures exchange, is extending New York Mercantile Exchange electronic trading hours this weekend because of Ike. Trading will begin at 10 a.m. New York time on Sept. 14, earlier than the normal opening of 7 p.m.
Ike is similar to Hurricane Alicia in 1983, according to Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist at Planlytics Inc. in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
`Devastated' Infrastructure
``It took them over a year to get their feet on the ground again,'' he said. ``The refineries were down for months. Basically, the whole infrastructure around the Houston metropolitan area was devastated.''
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced the temporary shutdown of at least 20 U.S. refineries during August and September 2005, idling 30 percent of the nation's capacity. Most of those plants resumed operations within a few weeks of the storms.
Gasoline supplies across the southern and eastern U.S. may be disrupted by Ike, Rouiller said.
``We could have this capability lost for a long period of time,'' he said.
Exxon Mobil shut down its Baytown, Texas, refinery, the biggest in the U.S, with processing capacity of 590,500 barrels of oil a day, and its Beaumont plant, which can process 363,100 barrels a day, according to the company's Web site. Exxon is the world's largest oil company.
Valero, the largest U.S. refiner, closed three Texas oil refineries with a combined capacity of 589,000 barrels a day. They are the 294,000-barrel-a-day Port Arthur refinery, a Texas City plant with a capacity of 210,000 barrels and a Houston facility able to process 85,000 barrels, spokesman Bill Day said.
MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
I read that the storm surge topped out at only 13.5 feet....only about half of the 20-25 feet that was predicted.
Good thing too. Its bad enough as it is at only 13.5 feet.
Good thing too. Its bad enough as it is at only 13.5 feet.
Galveston doesn't have walls on the bay side. So 13.5 feet is still bad.
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
TheLastOne36
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2007
- Messages
- 14,045
^it's still huge.
Jack the Ripper
King
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2004
- Messages
- 785
so it appears bush has yet to address the situation in Galveston, that can only mean one thing...
Red Cross Speech on Federal Aid to Galveston
Red Cross Speech on Federal Aid to Galveston
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Ike itself is gone. Now to the aftermath.
Houston Ports, Airports Await to Reopen After Ike
Sunday, September 14, 2008
HOUSTON High winds, flooding and power outages left behind by Hurricane Ike will delay the return to work for many businesses in and around Houston, the country's fourth-largest city and center of the nation's energy industry.
Airlines canceled flights to Houston on Sunday and planned only limited service Monday. Port officials weren't sure whether they could reopen for shipping as planned on Monday morning.
Some of the city's big corporations announced that they wouldn't open their offices until at least Tuesday, after Ike's winds blew out windows in downtown skyscrapers and flooding closed major roads. Many employees were calling insurance adjusters after their homes were flooded.
In the Gulf of Mexico, some offshore oil and gas platforms were destroyed, federal officials said Sunday. Still, there was relief that refineries, chemical plants and the country's second-busiest port sustained relatively minor damage.
Before the storm made landfall Saturday morning, damage forecasts ranged from $8 billion to $25 billion, but then the storm's path spun away from the heart of Houston's ship channel and refining and chemical plants.
Howard Mills, insurance adviser to the consulting firm Deloitte LLP, said the early forecasts were "a little bit high."
"Houston is a mess, but not as bad as it could have been if the surge had gone up that ship channel," Mills said. "But you're still looking at very significant business-interruption losses. The power outages in downtown Houston alone are a problem."
Beyond Texas, Ike's most obvious impact was being felt at the gas pump. Federal officials had bad news for motorists when they announced Sunday that the storm destroyed at least 10 oil and gas platforms and damaged pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico.
It wasn't immediately known how much effect the damage would have, although it affected only a fraction of the 3,800 production platforms in the Gulf. Three years ago, back-to-back hurricanes knocked out more than 100 platforms.
With more than a dozen Gulf Coast refineries shut down, prices surged above $5 a gallon in some places and the nationwide price for regular rose more than 6 cents to $3.795.
Power outages were slowing efforts to restart the refineries. Valero Energy Corp. said only one of its closed refineries had power, and spokesman Bill Day said he couldn't estimated how long it would take to resume production.
If refineries are unable to restart swiftly, that could also push up fuel prices for airlines, railroads and trucking companies.
Oil companies tried to head off charges of price-gouging, saying that they too were forced to buy fuel on higher-priced spot markets because of lost production at their own facilities.
Chemical company BASF said its six local plants avoided major damage and the largest had power.
Officials at the port of Houston, an economic engine for the region, said they would decide Sunday night whether to reopen on Monday. It all depends on the restoration of power which was still out Sunday morning and a green light from the Coast Guard, which was still checking the Houston ship channel for any submerged objects that might have been swept into the shipping lanes.
In downtown Houston, about 60 miles inland from the Gulf, streets were littered with glass from broken windows, and officials told people to stay home.
Some of the big corporations based downtown planned to keep offices closed Monday. Natural gas distributor El Paso Corp. said its office tower, where most of the company's 2,000 Houston employees work, had sustained water damage and wouldn't be open until at least Tuesday.
Tenants in the 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower, the tallest building in Texas, could only assess damage from afar they weren't able to get in but many of the windows were blown out.
"Broken windows are very expensive," said Tom Larsen, senior vice president of EQECAT Inc., which provides storm-damage forecasts for insurance companies. "Water gets in, so you wipe out all the walls, all the ceilings, all the computers."
Law firm Andrews Kurth LLP, headquartered in the JPMorgan tower, planned to farm out its 250 lawyers based there to other locations in Texas but continue doing its work "All of our BlackBerrys are working," said spokeswoman Ashley Ronald.
Another law firm in the tower, Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP, didn't expect to reopen until at least Wednesday.
More than 3 million people in Texas lost power during the storm, and although utilities scrambled to restore service, some areas of Houston could be without electricity for weeks, officials said.
Larsen, the EQECAT executive, said after big storms most businesses are back running within a week. His firm was sticking with its pre-landfall forecast of $8 billion to $18 billion in damage.
"Financially, this was a big storm," he said.
Residents and business owners deluged insurance companies with calls.
Nationwide Financial Services Inc., one of the smaller insurers in Texas, had received more than 5,000 claims by midday Sunday. Associate vice president Tracy Thaxton said the company's call centers expected 8,000 calls Sunday 2,500 would be normal and even more in the days ahead as people return to storm-hit areas.
Houston Ports, Airports Await to Reopen After Ike
Sunday, September 14, 2008
HOUSTON High winds, flooding and power outages left behind by Hurricane Ike will delay the return to work for many businesses in and around Houston, the country's fourth-largest city and center of the nation's energy industry.
Airlines canceled flights to Houston on Sunday and planned only limited service Monday. Port officials weren't sure whether they could reopen for shipping as planned on Monday morning.
Some of the city's big corporations announced that they wouldn't open their offices until at least Tuesday, after Ike's winds blew out windows in downtown skyscrapers and flooding closed major roads. Many employees were calling insurance adjusters after their homes were flooded.
In the Gulf of Mexico, some offshore oil and gas platforms were destroyed, federal officials said Sunday. Still, there was relief that refineries, chemical plants and the country's second-busiest port sustained relatively minor damage.
Before the storm made landfall Saturday morning, damage forecasts ranged from $8 billion to $25 billion, but then the storm's path spun away from the heart of Houston's ship channel and refining and chemical plants.
Howard Mills, insurance adviser to the consulting firm Deloitte LLP, said the early forecasts were "a little bit high."
"Houston is a mess, but not as bad as it could have been if the surge had gone up that ship channel," Mills said. "But you're still looking at very significant business-interruption losses. The power outages in downtown Houston alone are a problem."
Beyond Texas, Ike's most obvious impact was being felt at the gas pump. Federal officials had bad news for motorists when they announced Sunday that the storm destroyed at least 10 oil and gas platforms and damaged pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico.
It wasn't immediately known how much effect the damage would have, although it affected only a fraction of the 3,800 production platforms in the Gulf. Three years ago, back-to-back hurricanes knocked out more than 100 platforms.
With more than a dozen Gulf Coast refineries shut down, prices surged above $5 a gallon in some places and the nationwide price for regular rose more than 6 cents to $3.795.
Power outages were slowing efforts to restart the refineries. Valero Energy Corp. said only one of its closed refineries had power, and spokesman Bill Day said he couldn't estimated how long it would take to resume production.
If refineries are unable to restart swiftly, that could also push up fuel prices for airlines, railroads and trucking companies.
Oil companies tried to head off charges of price-gouging, saying that they too were forced to buy fuel on higher-priced spot markets because of lost production at their own facilities.
Chemical company BASF said its six local plants avoided major damage and the largest had power.
Officials at the port of Houston, an economic engine for the region, said they would decide Sunday night whether to reopen on Monday. It all depends on the restoration of power which was still out Sunday morning and a green light from the Coast Guard, which was still checking the Houston ship channel for any submerged objects that might have been swept into the shipping lanes.
In downtown Houston, about 60 miles inland from the Gulf, streets were littered with glass from broken windows, and officials told people to stay home.
Some of the big corporations based downtown planned to keep offices closed Monday. Natural gas distributor El Paso Corp. said its office tower, where most of the company's 2,000 Houston employees work, had sustained water damage and wouldn't be open until at least Tuesday.
Tenants in the 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower, the tallest building in Texas, could only assess damage from afar they weren't able to get in but many of the windows were blown out.
"Broken windows are very expensive," said Tom Larsen, senior vice president of EQECAT Inc., which provides storm-damage forecasts for insurance companies. "Water gets in, so you wipe out all the walls, all the ceilings, all the computers."
Law firm Andrews Kurth LLP, headquartered in the JPMorgan tower, planned to farm out its 250 lawyers based there to other locations in Texas but continue doing its work "All of our BlackBerrys are working," said spokeswoman Ashley Ronald.
Another law firm in the tower, Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP, didn't expect to reopen until at least Wednesday.
More than 3 million people in Texas lost power during the storm, and although utilities scrambled to restore service, some areas of Houston could be without electricity for weeks, officials said.
Larsen, the EQECAT executive, said after big storms most businesses are back running within a week. His firm was sticking with its pre-landfall forecast of $8 billion to $18 billion in damage.
"Financially, this was a big storm," he said.
Residents and business owners deluged insurance companies with calls.
Nationwide Financial Services Inc., one of the smaller insurers in Texas, had received more than 5,000 claims by midday Sunday. Associate vice president Tracy Thaxton said the company's call centers expected 8,000 calls Sunday 2,500 would be normal and even more in the days ahead as people return to storm-hit areas.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Well, Ike is not entirely gone yet - old Ikey still has enough life left in its extra-tropical form to dump significant amount of rains and non-negligible winds on the north-east (Ontario and Quebec, really) - but yeah.
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
MSNBC said:Ike victims search streets for food, water, gas
60 survivors found on isolated peninsula; death toll at 34 in 9 states
Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters
Residents who didn't leave ahead of Ike wait for ice, water and ready-to-eat meals at a FEMA site in Houston on Monday. In nearby Galveston, hungry and exhausted residents were urged to leave that city as relief supplies failed to meet demand.
HOUSTON - A humanitarian crisis unfolded Monday along the Texas coast as thousands of Hurricane Ike victims clamored for food, water, electricity and gasoline — and found nothing much to go home to except streets littered with piles of debris, spewing sewage, and floodwaters crawling with snakes and alligators.
It could be weeks until the more than 2 million without power have their lights turned on again. Lines snaked for blocks down side streets at gas stations that had little fuel to pump, and thousands packed shelters looking for dry places to sleep.
“Quite frankly we are reaching a health crisis for the people who remain on the island,” said Steve LeBlanc, the city manager in Galveston, where at least a third of the community’s 60,000 residents remained in their homes during and after Ike.
In Houston, tensions were rising among more than 1,000 who had spent several nights at the George R. Brown Convention Center because most of the city is still without power. They complained that they couldn’t get information about how to get food and clean clothes. The city’s mayor said only 1,300 people were inside, but those sleeping on cots said it felt like thousands.
At sites distributing water, ice and prepackaged meals, people stood on foot for hours waiting for anything they could take home.
Mary Shelton, 71, and her neighbor Letha Wilson, 78, sat in their sport utility vehicle waiting to get supplies at a distribution center in Houston. "We need some ice," Shelton said.
Michael Stevenson had wandered from shelter to shelter since the storm struck before ending up at the convention center. At one shelter, he said, he barely ate.
“They give you a little cup of water every four hours. They feed us one peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We were in there for about 18 hours before we could go outside and get some air,” he said.
Many of those who made it to safety boarded buses without knowing where they were going or when they could return to what might remain of their homes.
Shelters across Texas scurried to find enough cots, and some evacuees arrived with little cash and no idea of what the coming days held. At least 37,000 people were still being housed Monday at nearly 300 shelters.
60 survivors found at Bolivar Peninsula
Closer to the Gulf Coast, a Texas helicopter task force flew 115 rescuers onto the heavily damaged resort barrier island of Bolivar Peninsula, just east of hard-hit Galveston.
By Monday afternoon, the crews had found 60 survivors and, fortunately, no dead.
Task force leader Chuck Jones said they were the first rescuers to reach the area that is home to about 30,000 people in the peak summer beach season.
"They had a lot of devastation over there," Jones said. "It took a direct hit."
Some subdivisions in the area are completely gone, he said.
Jones did not have information on whether anyone had died on the island, mainly because they still don't know how many stayed through the storm that struck early Saturday.
Of particular concern is a resident who collects exotic animals who is now holed up in a Baptist church with his pet lion. "We're not going in there," Jones said. "We know where he (the lion) is on the food chain."
The death toll rose to 34 in nine states, most of them north of the Gulf Coast as the storm slogged across the nation's midsection.
Houston, littered with glass from skyscrapers, was placed under a weeklong curfew and millions of people in the storm's path remained in the dark.
Rescuers said they had saved nearly 2,000 people from waterlogged streets and splintered houses by Sunday afternoon.
Snapshots of damage were emerging everywhere: In Galveston, oil was coating the water and beaches with a sheen, and residents were ordered off the beach. Dozens of cement vaults popped up out of the water-swollen ground, many disgorging their coffins. Several came to rest against a chain link fence, choked with garbage and trinkets left behind by mourners.
George Levias shook his head when he discovered the graves of his mother-in-law and best friend open. He recognized the casket of co-worker Leonard Locks by its ceramic floral handles.
“I just don’t know what to say,” the 75-year-old Levias said as he walked gingerly among open graves filled with water. “Loved ones being disturbed like that.”
'Do not come back to Galveston'
Even for those who still have a home to go to, Ike's 110 mph winds and battering waves left thousands in coastal areas without electricity, gas and basic communications — and officials estimated it may not be restored for a month.
"We want our citizens to stay where they are," said a weary Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, who estimated up to 20,000 people were still on the island. "Do not come back to Galveston. You cannot live here at this time."
Thomas also said the city planned to bring in a cruise ship to shelter crews helping in the recovery effort.
The downtown area, containing the few buildings that survived a hurricane in 1900 that killed thousands, was under a layer of foul-smelling mud and sewage. Boats, water scooters and even a catamaran were strewn on the streets.
“It looks like a war zone. Everything is gone. It’s heartbreaking,” said Susan Rybick, a retiree driving along the seafront with her husband.
Michael Geml has braved other storms in his bayfront neighborhood in Galveston, where he's lived for 25 years, though none quite like Ike. The 51-year-old stayed in the third-story Jacuzzi of a neighbor's house, directly on the bay, with family pets as waves crashed across the landscape.
"I'll never stay again," Geml said. "I don't care what the weatherman says — a Category 1, a Category 2. I thought I was going to die."
Only a few structures remain standing Sunday at Crystal Beach on Galveston County's Bolivar Peninsula.
Brad Loper / AP
Kathi and Paul Norton huddled inside their house in Crystal Beach until it collapsed and was swept away. Their flag pole kept the house from collapsing on top of them, buying them a few seconds to escape, holding onto the staircase.
"You never know what a hurricane is like until you ride it on a staircase," said Kathi Norton. As she spoke outside the giant, warehouse-like shelter on a former Air Force base in San Antonio, busloads of new evacuees were arriving, bumper to bumper.
The hurricane also destroyed at least 10 oil production platforms, officials said. Details about the size and production capacity of the destroyed platforms were not immediately available, but the damage was to only a fraction of the 3,800 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
President Bush made plans to visit the area on Tuesday. He said getting power restored is an extremely high priority and urged power companies to "please recruit out-of-state people to come and help you do this."
Ike was downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved north. Roads were closed in Kentucky because of high winds. As far north as Chicago, dozens of people in a suburb had to be evacuated by boat. Three million customers were without power in Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio and Louisiana.
The U.S. death toll stood at 34 deaths in nine states as Ike moved from Texas northeastward across the U.S. midsection:
Texas — seven dead, including one person found in a submerged vehicle in Galveston and a 4-year-old Houston boy dead of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning from an emergency generator.
Louisiana — six dead, including a 16-year-old boy trapped in rising water.
Tennessee — two dead, both golfers killed by a falling tree.
Arkansas — one killed by a tree falling on a mobile home.
Ohio — four dead, including one killed by a tree falling on a home.
Indiana — seven dead, including a father and son killed helping children escape from a ditch.
Illinois — two dead, including an elderly man found in a flooded backyard.
Missouri — four dead, including a woman struck by a tree limb and an elderly man suspected of drowning in a flooded yard.
Kentucky — one dead, a 10-year-old boy struck by a tree limb while mowing a lawn.
Ike killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before reaching the United States.
Huge medical complex still open
Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, was reduced to near-paralysis in some places. But power was on in downtown office towers Sunday afternoon, and Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical complex, was unscathed and remained open. Both places have underground power lines.
Its two airports — including George Bush Intercontinental, one of the busiest in the United States — were reopened Monday with limited service. But schools were closed until further notice, and the business district was shuttered.
Five people were arrested at a pawn shop north of Houston and charged with burglary in what Harris County Sheriff's spokesman Capt. John Martin described as looting, but there was no widespread spike in crime.
Authorities said Sunday afternoon that 1,984 people had been rescued, including 394 by air. Besides people literally plucked to safety, that figure includes people met by crews as they waded through floodwaters trying to find dry ground.
The storm also took a toll in Louisiana, where hundreds of homes were flooded and power outages worsened as the state struggles to recover from Hurricane Gustav, which struck over Labor Day.
Attachments
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
In other news, for the first time in a full month (from Fay which formed on August 15 to ike dissipating yesterday, on september 14), the Atlantic...is quiet.
About time too. Though I expect it's only a deep breath before a second plunge (the eye of the storm, so to speak), it's a welcome break. Three serious candidate for retirement active at once...is pretty hectic. (Gustav, Hanna and Ike, which shared the Atlantic from september 1 to september 4).
About time too. Though I expect it's only a deep breath before a second plunge (the eye of the storm, so to speak), it's a welcome break. Three serious candidate for retirement active at once...is pretty hectic. (Gustav, Hanna and Ike, which shared the Atlantic from september 1 to september 4).
