Hurricane Ike aftermath

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ike plowed into Texas early today, driving the Gulf of Mexico's waters into Galveston Island, blowing out office-building windows and cutting power to at least 4.5 million people in the Houston area.

The storm flooded homes, shut oil refineries and scattered 2.3 million people in two states who fled before its fury arrived. Winds blew pine trees sideways in Houston, the nation's fourth-biggest city, where electrical transformers sparked and residents waited out the hurricane in their homes last night under a citywide curfew.


Officials expressed relief the storm didn't turn out to be the ``catastrophic'' event that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had warned about yesterday. Texas Governor Rick Perry said a 20-foot ``tsunami'' of water might surge up the 54- mile Houston Ship Channel, which serves area refineries.

``The worst-case scenario that was projected before the storm, particularly in the Houston Ship Channel, did not occur,'' Perry said in a televised press conference today. He cautioned, though, that ``there is still plenty of damage out there.''


Ike weakened to a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 45 miles per hour (72 kph), down from 110 mph, or Category 2, at its early morning landfall in Galveston, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in an advisory just before 4 p.m. local time. It was southeast of Tyler, Texas, moving north at 18 mph and headed for western Arkansas tonight.


Search and Rescue

Chertoff said 50 aircraft are now in the air on search-and- rescue missions, which Perry said was the state's largest such operation ever.

Ike was the first storm to hit a major U.S. metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. The Houston area, with a population of 5.6 million, is the sixth largest in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The storm surge in Galveston, predicted to be as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters), may have peaked at only 12.5 feet, according to a National Weather Service tidal gauge.

``With the eye and the eye wall passing directly over Galveston, that was kind of their saving grace,'' said Joe Bartosik, a meteorologist with WeatherBug.com. ``Even though they took the storm core, they escaped the really damaging side.''

About 40 percent of Galveston's 57,400 people decided to stay and ride out the storm, Steve LeBlanc, the city manager, said in a televised press conference yesterday.

Prepared for `Worst'

``We hope that people were able to find a place to hide,'' said Chertoff, who is flying to Texas later today. Still, ``we're prepared for the worst.''

A 300-foot pier and eight concrete supports broke away and became a battering ram that tore the front off of Bill King's Bermuda-style house in Kemah, Texas, piling up books and golf clubs among the stunned birds already lying on the grass.

King, who has helped advise on Houston's hurricane evacuations, found himself a victim of Ike's storm surge that left water from Galveston Bay in the swimming pool of his weekend home.

``It's a mess,'' said King, a former mayor of Kemah, which is about 28 miles southeast of Houston. ``This house had never been inundated before, and it has been in some pretty good hurricanes.''

Bartosik said areas along the Texas coast stretching into southwestern Louisiana received a far greater storm surge than Galveston did. In Port Arthur, Texas, storm surges of between 15 to 20 feet were recorded and Beaumont, Texas, 78 miles northeast of Houston, has about 9 feet of water in its downtown.

`Our Town'

The Kemah Boardwalk, an amusement park that draws about 5 million visitors to the city annually, was under water.

``It's our town; we'll be back,'' City Administrator Bill Kerber said in an interview.

Houston's 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower had windows on its west side smashed out, according to the local CBS affiliate, KHOU-TV. The Enron Building and Crown Plaza Hotel were also damaged, the station reported. The city's George Bush Intercontinental Airport and William P. Hobby airports remained closed.

Bartosik said Doppler radar showed winds were blowing as high as 130 mph above the 10th floor of buildings in downtown Houston.

``That accounts for a lot of the blown-out windows that have occurred,'' Bartosik said by telephone. ``Houston was in the western eye wall for a good hour-and-a-half.''

The storm has closed 19 percent of the refining capacity in the U.S. At least 13 refineries in Texas shut down including those operated by Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Gulf Coast refineries and ports are the source of half of the fuel and crude used in the eastern U.S.

Without Power

About 4.5 million people are in the Houston-based CenterPoint Energy Inc.'s service area and ``almost all of them are without power.'' Before the storm hit, CenterPoint estimated it could be weeks to restore power, said Floyd LeBlanc, a company spokesman.

``We may have to revise that,'' he said. ``We have gotten literally thousands of calls from customers reporting downed power lines.''

The hurricane may cause $8 billion to $18 billion in insured losses on land as it moves from coastal Galveston to Houston and further inland, according to Oakland, California-based Eqecat Inc., which predicts the effects of disasters.

Ike left more than 70 people dead in Haiti and killed four in Cuba as it swept through the Caribbean earlier this week. CNN reported at least four people have been killed so far in Texas.

President George W. Bush said this morning the federal government was ``prepared to move'' quickly to help Texas recover. He declared a major disaster for Texas, which makes federal funding available to people living in 29 counties hit by Ike.

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net; Tom Korosec in Houston, via the New York newsroom at mschoifet@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 13, 2008 16:41 EDT SOURCE