Hurricane Ike Batters Texas
Hurricane Ike ripped across the Texas coast early this morning, pushing a storm surge of as much as 13-15 feet of water ashore and blasting winds of more than 100 mph through Houston’s high rise buildings.
From the Washington Post:
The nation’s fourth-largest city was hunkered down, waiting for the worst of the storm to pass by.
Although damage reports were spotty in the pre-dawn hours, it appeared from news reports and television images that flooding had damaged many homes and structures along the coastline and concerns grew about casualties. Officials in Galveston, which took a frontal attack from Hurricane Ike, received emergency calls through the night from residents seeking help, but it was too dangerous to send out rescuers.
President Bush, speaking on the White House lawn Saturday morning, said state and federal workers are poised to help those affected by the storm. “I’ve been briefed on the rescue teams there in the area. They’re prepared to move as soon as weather conditions permit.”
Television broadcasts suggested that the communities of Lake Charles, south of Galveston, and Clear Lake, between Galveston and Houston, may have suffered extensive property damages. And some forecasters predicted that the area around Port Arthur, near the border with Louisiana, which was experiencing the northeast side of the storm, faced serious flooding and wind damage.
An official from CenterPoint Energy said that about 90 percent of its roughly 2 million customers were without power, the Houston Chronicle reported on its Web site. Full restoration could take several weeks, said CenterPoint spokesman Floyd LeBlanc.
Tags: CenterPoint, Clear Lake, Damage, Flood, Flooding, Floyd LeBlanc, Galveston, George Bush, Gustav, Houston, Hurricane, Hurricane Gustav, Hurricane Ike, Ike, Lake Charles, Port Arthur, Storm, Texas, Weather, Wind
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September 14, 2008 at 1:45 am
My uncle lives right near Galveston and he just called to say his house is under water. Crazy stuff and this is a not even considered a super strong one!