Huge rescue effort begins after Ike slams Texas

HOUSTON — Hurricane Ike barreled across a wide area of East Texas on Saturday, deluging the city of Galveston with an 11-foot-high wall of water and leaving a massive amount of damage across metropolitan Houston.

Gov. Rick Perry said the largest search-and-rescue effort in the state's history was under way, and it could take days to search flooded homes to assess the full impact of the storm.

Perry mobilized 7,500 National Guard troops, and Houston Mayor Bill White said firefighters and police officers started responding to emergencies as soon as conditions became safe Saturday.

"The unfortunate truth is we're going to have to go in and put our people in the tough situation to save people who did not choose wisely," said Andrew Barlow, a spokesman for Perry.

Perry's office said there had been 940 rescues of stranded people since Ike made landfall. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said nearly 600 people had been plucked from Ike's floodwaters since Friday.

A million people evacuated coastal areas before the storm struck, but authorities estimated that more than 100,000 people throughout the region, including 20,000 in Galveston, disregarded mandatory evacuation orders.

With wind gusts approaching 100 mph, the Category 2 hurricane peeled sheets of steel off skyscrapers in Houston, smashed bus shelters and blew out windows, sending shattered glass and debris across the nation's fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million.

Almost the entire metropolitan area lost power, with local news organizations reporting that more than 3 million people were trying to manage without power.

Downtown, the 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower was hit hard by Ike's winds, which shattered most of its windows and left office materials and other debris dangling. Office equipment, furniture, desktop computers, window blinds and files littered the streets below the tower.

Reliant Stadium, home to the NFL's Houston Texans, sustained roof damage, and Monday's scheduled game with the Baltimore Ravens was postponed. A landmark restaurant, Brennan's, just south of downtown, was destroyed by a wind-whipped fire that erupted after midnight. Three people sheltering in the building were taken to local hospitals.

By afternoon, Ike had deteriorated to a tropical storm in East Texas, the National Hurricane Center reported. Although its winds were down to about 60 mph, heavy rains and ability to spawn tornadoes continued to pose threats, the center said.

Immense damage

The storm, which had killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before making landfall in the United States early Saturday, killed at least two people in Texas and one in Louisiana, but the toll was likely to rise. A woman died Saturday when a tree fell on her home near Pinehurst. A 19-year-old man slipped off a jetty near Corpus Christi and apparently washed away. And Louisiana officials said a 16-year-old boy drowned after falling out of a fishing boat in flooded Bayou Dularge.

The enormous size of the storm had rescuers struggling to pinpoint the hardest-hit places.

Ike spanned more than 500 miles, spreading damage from south of Houston to the mouth of the Mississippi River. A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had received numerous and conflicting reports about where the damage was — and how bad.

President Bush declared a major disaster in Texas and ordered immediate federal aid.

Officials were encouraged that the storm surge topped out at 13.5 feet, lower than the catastrophic 20- to 25-foot wall of water forecasters had expected, but major roads were washed out near Galveston, and the damage was still immense.

Longtime residents of Galveston, a city of 57,000, said the damage was the worst they had seen; the city manager estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

Officials said early reports indicated 17 homes and buildings had collapsed because of fires that emergency personnel could not get to. Galveston officials said they had received more than 100 calls for help, mostly from people trying to get out of their homes.

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 one evacuee gave birth to a baby girl in a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades.

Gas prices may spike

The magnitude of the power loss and the flooding appeared to promise that several major oil refineries that have been shut down for the past few days would need weeks to reopen. As a result, gasoline prices probably will spike throughout the country, even if oil prices continue to ease on international markets.

Overnight, prices rose an average of 5 cents a gallon, to $3.73 for regular gasoline, according to AAA, although prices in the Puget Sound region remained virtually unchanged Saturday.

The hurricane swelled waters in Galveston's shipping channel, which could curtail oil imports for weeks. And it will take at least several days before oil companies can assess the damage to hundreds of oil and natural-gas platforms off the Gulf Coast.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service said there were two confirmed reports of drilling rigs adrift in the central Gulf of Mexico. Spokeswoman Eileen Angelico said Saturday the rigs are about 100 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Regional director Lars Herbst said he expects tugs to approach to secure the rigs when sea conditions allow.

"A time of testing"

Area politicians said it also would take days to assess the damage to lives and property, but it appeared that the hurricane would become the most punishing storm to hit the area since Hurricane Alicia 25 years ago.

At least 100,000 homes were inundated by surging waters, while isolated fires erupted in downtown Houston and around the region when trees and flying objects fell on electrical transformers, causing sparks.

In Houston, only the downtown area and the medical-center section had power.

"This is going to be a time of testing," said White, the mayor. "This is a time for neighbors to help neighbors. I'm encouraging people to show the nation and ourselves just how competent we are."

Spokesmen for CenterPoint and Entergy, two important regional utilities, said it could take several weeks to restore power for all of their customers.

Sen. Barack Obama canceled an appearance on "Saturday Night Live," aides said, because he thought it would be inappropriate during the storm.

Civic leaders asked residents to conserve water and call 911 only in life-or-death situations.

"We don't know what we're going to find," Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. "We hope we'll find that the people who didn't leave here are alive and well."

Strong, fast-moving Ike

The storm was large and powerful but moved through the region more quickly than some previous hurricanes and tropical storms, reducing the amount of flooding. But meteorologists said the hurricane winds were as potent as had been forecast, hitting land as a strong Category 2 storm.

Galveston Fire Chief Mike Varela said flooding was 8 to 10 feet deep in some areas of the city. He said his department tried to respond to one fire but could not reach it.

"The low-lying neighborhoods are extremely flooded right now," he said. Varela assessed damage to the city as a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Compiled from The Associated Press, The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, MarketWatch and McClatchy Newspapers