To our readers who live in Texas and might be affected by this hurricane, I wish you all the best. It’s a tough deal. And if any of you have anything to add about the storm and what you are seeing, feel free to put it up in the comments section.
As for job stuff, all the same companies I listed for Gustav would be a safe bet to put in with. I did read in one of the forums that a few of them are getting some big orders for more security guards. One of them was Cohort International. –Head Jundi
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Hurricane Ike pushes sea onto Texas island
* Story Highlights
* NEW: Rescuers make final sweep of flooded Galveston Island community
* Military official says 37,000 people may need to be rescued
* Freighter with 22 aboard adrift in Ike’s path
* Life-threatening floods expected in parts of coastal Texas, agency says
HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) — Floodwaters surged into Galveston Island neighborhoods Friday morning with the center of Hurricane Ike still more than 200 miles from landfall.
On the Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of Galveston, the Coast Guard was rescuing stranded motorists by helicopter.
A U.S. military official told CNN that Texas anticipates 37,000 people may need to be rescued.
Texas has asked for help, and the active-duty military has 42 search-and-rescue helicopters on standby, the official said.
On Galveston Island, waves washed for blocks inland, the beginning of a storm surge that forecasters warned could reach up to 22 feet and bring “certain death” to anyone who remained in Galveston Bay homes.
More than half of the community of Surfside Beach was inundated by 8 a.m. Friday, and rescuers drove a dump truck through the streets in a final bid to get people out before the storm hits, the Houston Chronicle reported. VideoWatch floodwaters surge into Galveston »
“It’s dangerous, but it’s Mother Nature,” Bobby Taylor, 47, who planned to stay, told the Chronicle. “There are good parts about it. It’s beautiful. The water doesn’t frighten me.”
He told the paper he could walk or kayak out if necessary. “It’s just water, man.”
Forecasters expect Ike, a Category 2 storm, to strengthen before its center makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday. Winds upward of 100 mph may reach the Texas coast by midnight, the hurricane center warned.
The storm is so big that it fills most of the Gulf of Mexico. Track the storm »
In the Gulf, 22 people were stranded aboard a freighter that had lost its engines and was adrift in the path of Ike, the Coast Guard reported.
The 584-foot Cyprus-flagged freighter, the Antalina, was trying to beat the storm heading south from Port Arthur, Texas, when it lost power about 90 miles south of Galveston, Coast Guard Capt. Bill Diehl said.
“The best-case scenario is that Hurricane Ike pushes this freighter up into shallow water where they can drop anchor and ride out the storm,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Thomas Blue said.
Blue said officials are still weighing their options, but “we’re getting to the point where the wind gusts are too high to launch our helicopter.”
Although the weather service reports when a hurricane’s center will hit land, it also says that the worst of the storm can hit before or after that.
Roughly 3.5 million people live in the storm’s impact zone, according to federal estimates. iReport.com: Are you in Ike’s path? Share your story
The weather service painted a vivid picture in its warning of the destruction it expects: a towering wall of water crashing over the Galveston Bay shoreline as the brunt of Ike comes ashore. That wall of water could send floodwaters surging into Houston, more than 20 miles inland. VideoWatch CNN meteorologists track Hurricane Ike »
“All neighborhoods … and possibly entire coastal communities … will be inundated during the peak storm tide,” the weather service warned. “Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes will face certain death.”
But farther inland, 4 million Houston-area residents were told to hunker down and stay home.
“We are only evacuating areas subject to a storm surge,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief executive officer. “Yes, we know you will lose electricity. But you’re not in danger of losing your life, so stay put.”
Forecasters find Hurricane Ike so intimidating because of where they expect it to land — near Galveston Island, just south of Houston. The city of Galveston is on the island.
If that happens — hurricane tracks are hard to predict and subject to change — the storm’s counter-clockwise rotation would push water into Galveston Bay for hour upon hour, battering sea walls and structures.
The final storm surge, the one that could exceed 20 feet in height, would come as the hurricane’s eye crosses the shoreline.
Galveston spokeswoman Mary Jo Naschke estimated Friday morning that just over half of the city’s 58,000 people had been evacuated.
Others chose to stay.
“I’ve decided not to evacuate,” said iReporter Matteu Erchull on Galveston Island. “We have a lot of faith in the seawall, and we have boards on the windows. Most people on the island live on second or third stories, so they don’t have to worry about the water so much.
“The actual stores down here ran out of sand so we took some ice bags and filled them with sand from the beach,” he said. iReport.com: See Erchull bracing for Ike
Paul King of Galveston said hurricanes are part of life on the Texas coast, according to CNN affiliate KSAT-TV.
“You enjoy it 360 days of the year,” he said of his Galveston Island property. “And the other five, you have to get out of town.”
A slight northward change in Ike’s path could spare much of the Houston area and its millions of residents from catastrophic flooding by keeping the surge out of the bay and pushing it to less populated areas.
“Do not take this storm lightly,” Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Thursday afternoon. “This is not a storm to gamble with. It is large; it is powerful; it carries a lot of water.”
Chertoff and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said their efforts were focused on evacuations.
Chertoff also urged people not to succumb to “hurricane fatigue,” referring to concerns that authorities were overestimating Ike’s potential impact.
“Unless you’re fatigued with living, I suggest you want to take seriously a storm of this size and scale,” he said Thursday. VideoWatch how one family plans to avoid Ike »
Houston Mayor Bill White said he’s heard that some people who live in areas under a mandatory evacuation order say they plan to stay home. He strongly urged against it.
“If you think you want to ride something out, and people are talking about a 20-foot wall of water coming at you, then you better think again,” White said.
CNN’s Mike Ahlers, Jeanne Meserve, Barbara Starr and Mike Mount contributed to this report.
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/09/12/hurricane.ike.texas
