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Texas, Louisiana Begin Recovery

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By KEITH RICHBURG, JOEL ACHENBACH and SPENCER S. HSU

The Washington Post

Published: September 14, 2008

HOUSTON - Texas and Louisiana began a massive recovery effort Saturday, including searching for the stranded and missing, after Hurricane Ike, a colossal storm stretching about 600 miles, pulverized the Gulf Coast with maximum winds of about 100 mph as it flattened houses, ripped the glass windows from downtown office buildings and left a wide swath of flooding and devastation in its wake.

The Category 2 hurricane made landfall at 2:10 a.m. and plowed across eastern Texas before being downgraded 11 hours later to a tropical storm with 60 mph winds. Ike left about 2.4 million Texans - about 22 percent of the state - without power, in addition to 200,000 without power in Louisiana.

Texas state and utility company officials said it could be weeks before electricity is fully restored.

President Bush declared 29 counties in Texas as well as part of Louisiana disaster areas and planned to meet today with FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison and other officials about providing federal assistance.

With estimates putting the storm's insured damage at $10 billion, Ike could become the nation's third-costliest storm, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Andrew in 1992, and tied with Alicia in 1983, the costliest storm to hit Houston in recent memory.

In Galveston, the worst-hit city and the place where the massive storm's eye made landfall, authorities were still unsure whether there were fatalities among the thousands of residents who ignored warnings to flee. Rescue workers were moving block by block across 32-mile Galveston Island and had found no fatalities by the 11-mile marker. They were concerned, however, that there could be deaths on the more devastated western side.

"We haven't even gotten to the west end, and I know the west end is totally devastated," City Manager Steve LeBlanc said. Two apartment buildings in the eastern part of town collapsed. "We don't know if there are people in there or not," LeBlanc said.

The destruction on Galveston Island was widespread. About 17 structures collapsed - 10 because of fires.

About 100 people had been rescued by police and firefighters since the storm began, LeBlanc estimated at an afternoon news conference.

The rescue operation consisted of 52 helicopters, including five Black Hawks, coming from the Coast Guard and the Texas National Guard, and 7,500 Guard troops, Gov. Rick Perry told reporters at the state's emergency operations center in Austin.

Despite the extensive physical damage and worries about fatalities on Galveston, Perry said, "the worst-case scenario that was spoken about ... did not occur."

Storm's Shift Spares Texas Towns

Houston and Galveston were spared the worst because of a slight, last-minute shift of the storm's track to the north, U.S. officials said.

The storm hit Galveston Bay "more or less dead on" landing at or just north of the city - rather than just south as expected - and its most powerful winds and water also landed to the north because of the rotation of the storm, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said.

"That wound up slightly, somewhat diminishing the worst-case scenario," Chertoff said. The shift brought a surge of 9 to 16 feet to most of the Houston area, instead of the 20 feet initially forecast. "It still was a very substantial surge, and we should not minimize the impact of that," he said.

The experts were "dead on" with their latest forecasts that Ike would come ashore close to Galveston, even as the track shifted over several days, and that it would hit as a strong Category 2 storm, noted National Hurricane Center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.

Predicting Surge A Daunting Task

Yet, storm surge size remains one of the most daunting calculations to make, hurricane forecasters say.

"To get a perfect storm surge forecast, you have to have a perfect forecast for the track, a perfect forecast for its intensity and a perfect forecast of its structure, and we don't know how to do any of those perfectly," said former National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield.

Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La., says there are many variables to consider: "There's the size of the storm, which obviously in this case wasn't a good indicator, the speed, the tide cycle, the orientation of the coast, how the hurricane comes in."

McGee also said that the surge estimates were a good call, given how little is known about such massive storms.

"If word went out that this wasn't going to be anything to worry about, and the hurricane changed its nature and strength and it did produce a more significant surge, it would have been a much worse scenario," he said.

Ike was the first major hurricane to hit a densely populated urban area since Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, and was the first to score a direct hit on Houston since Alicia 25 years ago.

Reliant Stadium, home to the NFL's Houston Texans, sustained roof damage, and Monday's game with the Baltimore Ravens was postponed.

Johnson Space Center said there should be no disruption in communications with the International Space Station.

Houston is also home to more than a fifth of the nation's fuel-refining operations and 25 percent of crude oil production, and there were concerns that a disruption to oil supplies, or damage to the rigs or refineries, could lead to a spike in oil prices.

Pipeline operators reported Louisiana refiners expected to be able to make deliveries "in the pretty near future," said Kevin P. Kolevar, assistant secretary of energy for electricity delivery and energy reliability.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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