DanS.

Debris is seen scattered across Highway 146 on a bridge leading from Kemah t...
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Loading... Must Read?Thank YouYes 1471HOUSTON — Rescue crews in high-wheel trucks, helicopters and boats ventured out to pluck people from their homes Saturday in an all-out search for thousands of Texans who stubbornly stayed behind overnight to face Hurricane Ike.

The storm blew out skyscraper windows, cut power to millions and swamped thousands of homes along the coast. Yachts were carried up onto roadways, buildings and homes collapsed and cars floated in floodwaters.

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. Authorities estimated there were about 140,000 or more who stayed despite warnings they could die.

"There was a mandatory evacuation, and people didn't leave, and that is very frustrating because now, we are having to deal with everybody who did not heed the order. This is why we do it, and they had enough time to get out. It's just unfortunate that they decided to stay," said Steve LeBlanc, city manager in Galveston.

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.

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.

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 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.

In Galveston, buildings burned unattended overnight because fire crews couldn't get through flooded streets. Seventeen structures collapsed, including two apartment buildings, but authorities hadn't had any deaths reported. There was no water or power, and the main hospital had to fly critical care patients to other facilities.

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.

In Louisiana, Ike's storm surge inundated 1,800 homes. 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," Maj. John Marie said.

As Ike moved north later Saturday morning, the storm dropped to a Category 1 hurricane, then a tropical storm. At 5 p.m. EDT, the storm's center was 50 miles south-southeast of Mount Pleasant, Texas. Top sustained winds were about 45 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.

Refineries have had to shut down twice in the past two weeks as storms meanced the Gulf, and some worried a perceived supply shortage could send prices shooting back toward all-time highs of $4 per gallon, reached over the summer when oil prices neared $150 a barrel. In some parts of the country, prices surged briefly to $5 a gallon Saturday.

"They are just passing along the wholesale cost," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service.

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.

General News - Crews fan out in Texas to assess Ike's wrath

DanS.

The people that stayed should have to pay for their rescue...

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IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION
12 September 2008


just after 7 p.m.:

Back to the news, CNN style over substance:

1.) Hurricane Ike is the size of Texas and it’s hitting Texas. Coincidentally or providentially, that is the question. Is it not customary for the Holy Rollers to weigh in at a time like this, attributing the punishment to God and the crime to man? What make they, I wonder, about a Texas-sized hurricane hitting Texas.

2.) Another segment of the Gibson Inquisition of Sarah Palin. Looking over his spectacles and down his nose, he wants only a scarlet robe and matching beanie.

3.) The dissection of the clip of the Gibson Inquisition, steered by Anderson Cooper from his position on the ground where he is reporting on a hurricane larger than Katrina and presumably curing cancer.

4.) Train wreck right here in Southern California...commuter train head-on with a big ol' Union Pacific freight train. How the hell does something like that happen? Surely, a head-on collision is traceable to a source screw-up...we ARE talking about trains heading in opposite directions, toward each other, on the same track. ‘My bad’ doesn’t cut it.

I have endured several sets of commercials...it’s now quarter to eight...but have gleaned no other news, save one allusion to a spike in gas prices. Sooo...pretty much the same news as this morning. Nothing about Iraq, nothing about Russia, nothing about China, nothing about India, nothing about North Korea, nothing about Africa...but the most trusted name in news can’t overemphasize Sarah Palin’s provinciality.

Good one.

It will not surprise me if left wing and MSM persecution of Sarah Palin results in a semblance of You Go Girl solidarity among women. Hey, finally, right?

Politics, American Style...whatever it takes, baby, the ends justify the means.

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going on 11 a.m.:

Tony Harris...unquestionably one of the anchors I would let go in an overhaul of CNN...said we can’t speculate on why some of the last gaspers stayed, and that “we shouldn’t.”

Why’s that? Rescue operations are expensive and dangerous. Why the fuck those people are still there is absolutely a matter of public interest.

Which Tony Harris must have figured out, because right after he said we couldn’t and shouldn’t speculate, he proceeded to ask whether the reporter had any ideas as to why those people were still there. Also known as speculation.

Remember the commercial where the mom and two kids hit the mall, commando style, on a mission to secure movie tickets while the dad with whom they are in high-tech communication maneuvers for parking. The little boy falls on the escalator.

“Mikey’s down,” the mother says into her headset, looking back but not slowing her pace.

“Leave him!” barks the dad.

Americans find that a suitable marketing message.

The question is whether it is a suitable emergency response.

Resources are scarce. It is a fundamental law of economics.

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8 a.m.-ish
CNN advises me that Ike is 200 miles offshore, a couple hours from landfall.

Then CNN warns of higher prices at the gas pump, as of this morning. That’s just super quick...especially for an industry that revels in telling us that “these things take time” and “things are more complicated than people realize.”

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

The bottom line is the bottom line...it is ALWAYS about the money.

Speaking of, it is now reported that some 20,000 people have NOT evacuated, despite the CERTAIN DEATH warning. Hmmm. It seems unlikely that very many of those who stayed behind, despite the CERTAIN DEATH warning, were Special Needs folk who COULDN’T leave. It seems likely that most of those who stayed behind, despite the CERTAIN DEATH warning, could have left in an orderly and timely fashion.

I think the taxpayers should at least discuss who oughtta pay for those rescues.

At some point, too, WHETHER rescues should be attempted. It would be a crying shame to lose emergency response lives by saving reckless lives.

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excerpted:

...Resources are scarce.

Desire is limitless.

It is not possible to have and do everything that humans would naturally LIKE to have and do.

Emergency Response personnel are specially trained. Emergency Response equipment and tactics are expensive. Money has been invested in skill sets, hardware and administration because civilized society recognizes the occasional need and extraordinary benefit of having Emergency Response Systems at the ready.

Think “for a rainy day.”

Voila...a hurricane.

A hurricane the size of Texas, with an evacuation order citing “certain death” as the consequence of staying.

Yet people stay.

Whether to protect their stuff or to strut their other stuff, it boils down to immediate gratification. They did exactly what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it.

The hurricane disappoints the Rubber Neckers by being less theatrical and disastrous than Katrina, but it is nevertheless a whopper.

WAIT! I CHANGED MY MIND! HELP, MISTER WIZARD!!

And America dutifully trots out its high-tech, taxpayer-funded emergency response wizardry...to rescue the reckless.

I appreciate America’s optimism that no OTHER emergency will manifest while resources are squandered on fools...hope is a good thing. But social practicality and fiscal responsibility have a lot to commend them, too. As it happens, there was a head-on train wreck in Southern California concurrent with rescue operations in the hurricane evacuation zone. What if there had been a couple of other incidents? How many simultaneous incidents would overwhelm our Emergency Response Systems? Three? Four?

Where does built-in obsolescence come in? [reference not included] Survival of the fittest. Which genes stay in the pool because of their inherent strength/adaptability/desirability/functionality, and which are purposefully saved despite their stupidity/inflexibility/offensiveness/unproductiveness?

Some schmuck on CNN whose name I didn’t catch said very nearly verbatim this: “That’s what’s great about being American...we’ll come get you wherever you are, anywhere in the world.”

Really? Cool. America...the 21st century’s designated driver.

Within U.S., call: 1-800-GOV-RIDE

Outside U.S., call: 1-1-800-PLS-BAIL

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poetrychic

i agree...i was listening to npr today while i was on my way to the laundromat to scour the dog beds in super hot water and they were doing a report about how they've rescued 2000 people since last night....those were probably the very same people who were bragging about how they didn't need to heed the evacuation orders because they've lived there their whole lives....

too, they were also talking about how people were fighting at the gas stations because those who hadn't filled up yet were afraid those ahead of them would use all the gas they've known ike was coming for days and they just now decide to get gas?

southeast texas seems pretty ripe for some darwin awards

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"it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation, yes we can!"

gonzo

People like this make me want to scream. I've been one of those dispatchers taking those frantic calls AFTER they were told to evac. What part of "after this we won't be able to come after you" don't the idiots understand? I had one old couple screaming their asses off at me via 911 because Hurricane Charley was ripping their roof off, and of course, all emergency units had been yanked off the road due to the wind speeds. (And yes, we had nice shelters for them to go to..)

I agree!