Hurricane Ike punishing Texas coast
Hurricane Ike barreled into the densely populated Texas coast near Houston early on Saturday, bringing with it a wall of water and ferocious winds and rain that flooded large areas along the Gulf of Mexico and paralyzed the fourth-largest U.S. city.
Ike, which has idled more than a fifth of U.S. oil production, came ashore at the barrier island city of Galveston as a strong Category 2 storm at 2:10 a.m. CDT (3:10 a.m. EDT) with 110 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said.
Ike barreled through the Gulf of Mexico for days and covered a vast area extending hundreds of miles (km) when it slammed into the Texas coast. It is the biggest storm to hit a U.S. city since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.
The hurricane drove a wall of water over Galveston and submerged a 17-foot sea wall built to protect the city after a 1900 hurricane killed at least 8,000 people. More than half of its 60,000 residents had fled and emergency operations were suspended through the storm.
About 50 miles inland, Ike lashed downtown Houston’s glass-covered skyscrapers, blowing out windows and sending debris flying through water-clogged city streets.
The storm was downgraded to a Category 1 on the hurricane intensity scale at 8 a.m. CMT (9 a.m. EDT) carrying top sustained winds near 90 mph and moving north, but officials said it was too soon to assess the damage.
Texas officials were waiting for a break in the weather to deploy a search and rescue operation.
“We expected a major storm and our expectations unfortunately came true,” said Mark Miner, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “The weather needs to clear up a little bit to see just what the devastation was.”
The hurricane has shut down 17 oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, the heart of the U.S. oil sector where 22 percent of fuel supplies are processed. Energy experts said it would take at least a week for the refineries to get back to normal.
Houston was dark Saturday morning except for downtown and the Texas Medical Center, which are fed by underground power sources, Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said in an e-mail. Nearly all 2 million customers, or 4.5 million people, in the Houston-Galveston area were without power, he said.
“This is a huge storm that is causing a lot of damage, not only in Texas, but also in parts of Louisiana,” U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday.
He said the government would monitor gas prices to prevent extraordinary price increases because of Ike.
Source: Reuters