| | |  Americas & Beyond | September 2008 
Hurricane Ike Set to Slam Texas Coast; Thousands Flee
 Brian K. Sullivan & Tom Korosec - Bloomberg
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Hurricane Ike bore down on Texas, heading for landfall as early as today in Galveston, where forecasters warned residents of "certain death" if they ignore a mandatory evacuation order.
The warning from the National Hurricane Center also applies to coastal areas around Galveston, southeast of Houston, where highways were jammed yesterday as thousands fled inland. Parts of Galveston were already flooded, half a day before the storm's eye is expected to come ashore. Galveston Bay will be hit by an ocean surge as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters), and water levels a mile in from the coast may exceed 9 feet, the center said.
"All neighborhoods and possibly entire coastal communities will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide," the center said. "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family, one- or two-story homes may face certain death."
Ike, which tripled in size in the Gulf of Mexico in the past two days, was a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 105 miles per hour (169 kph), the center said just before 10 a.m. Houston time. Ike is following a track similar to the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed 8,000 people, the deadliest storm in U.S. history.
Ernest Baddeaux, a 66-year-old welder living a half-block from Galveston Bay in La Porte, said he was staying put. He hammered plywood over his windows and said he was reasonably confident his house, one of the few in the neighborhood raised on piers, would protect him.
Food for Weeks
Hurricane Alicia, which hit the Houston area in 1983, brought a 12-foot storm surge that didn't reach his property.
"I think one other family on the street is staying, too," he said, adding that he has an electric generator, a supply of gasoline and enough food and water to last for weeks.
Ike's projected path would make it the first storm to hit a major U.S. metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. Ike has the potential to cost insurers $25 billion, ranking it behind Katrina as the second-most expensive storm in U.S. history, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu estimated.
Houston's population is 2.2 million, making it the fourth- biggest U.S. city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and its metropolitan area, with a population of 5.6 million, is the sixth-largest in the U.S.
The area is also home to 23 percent of U.S. refining capacity. The region was devastated by Alicia, said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist with Planalytics Inc. in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Refineries Down
"The refineries were down for months," said Rouiller, who accurately predicted the path of Hurricane Gustav, which struck Louisiana Sept. 1. "The whole infrastructure around the Houston metropolitan area was devastated."
Ike was approaching the upper Texas coast, with the eye about 195 miles southeast of Galveston, the hurricane center said at 10 a.m. local time. The system was moving west-northwest at 12 mph. Winds stronger than 100 mph may hit the coast by midnight, it said.
Such a storm may collapse towers supporting high-voltage transmission lines carrying power to population centers, as Gustav did in Louisiana, Letitia Lowe, a spokeswoman for Houston electricity distributor CenterPoint Energy Inc., said today in an interview from her home as she prepared to leave for an emergency command post north of the city.
Kyle Shaw, 25, a shopper at Randalls supermarket in western Houston who works in real estate development and was preparing for his first hurricane, said he picked up extra water. Yesterday he visited a bookstore that was crammed with people.
Category 3
"I figure we're going to be without electricity for days and I was thinking about how to occupy my mind," Shaw said. "I can see myself reading books by candlelight."
Ike left more than 70 people dead in Haiti and killed four in Cuba as it swept through the Caribbean earlier this week.
The U.S. weather center said Ike may strengthen to Category 3, meaning sustained winds of at least 111 mph, before the eye crosses the coast, placing it in the middle rank of the Saffir- Simpson scale of intensity. Other forecasters predict Ike may become a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds of at least 131 mph, the second-strongest on the five-step scale.
Ike's winds cover an area larger than that of Katrina, said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at private forecaster Weather Underground Inc. Hurricane-force winds stretch across 240 miles, equivalent to the distance between New York to Washington.
President George W. Bush declared an emergency for Texas, his home state. As many as 7,500 Texas National Guard members are on standby.
NFL Game Postponed
Ike forced the Houston Texans to push back their National Football League home-opener against the Baltimore Ravens by a day to Sept. 15. The Houston Astros postponed two baseball games against the Chicago Cubs that were scheduled for today and tomorrow.
Oil prices rose on concern that Ike will crimp production. Crude oil for October delivery rose $0.78, or 0.8 percent, to $101.65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after touching the lowest since April yesterday.
The storm has shut 97 percent of Gulf oil production and 93 percent of natural gas output, the Minerals Management Service said yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10(at)bloomberg.net; Tom Korosec in Houston, via the New York newsroom at mschoifet(at)bloomberg.net |
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