By Anahad O'connor and Thayer Evans
Published: September 11, 2008
Published: September 11, 2008
Hundreds of thousands of people streamed out of Houston and neighboring cities on Thursday as Hurricane Ike continued on a collision course with the central coastline of Texas.
As forecasters issued increasingly dire predictions for Houston, the state's largest city and fourth largest in the country, local authorities shut down all schools, universities and government buildings — including NASA's Johnson Space Center — and ordered mandatory evacuations for thousands of residents. Hundreds of thousands more were evacuated from several counties along the coast, jamming interstate highways with miles of slow but steadily moving bumper t0 bumper traffic.
"Prepare for the worst, pray for the best," Governor Rick Perry of Texas said at a news briefing at an emergency center in Austin. The governor has mobilized about 1,300 buses for evacuees, put 100 ambulances on standby and activated more than 7,500 National Guard troops. Many of the people boarding buses out of town said they had been through this before.
"I'm very terrified," said Aretha May, 39, a homemaker in Galveston who was waiting on a bus Thursday afternoon with her two young daughters and their dachshund. "I don't want to be nowhere around this storm."
May said she arrived in Galveston three years ago after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home in New Orleans. Her sister, Evelyn May, chose to stay behind, she said, and has not been seen since.
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"Nobody can tell me where she's at or if she's alive or dead," she said.
Ike is expected to make landfall early Saturday as a possible Category 3 hurricane with winds exceeding 131 miles an hour. After striking somewhere between Corpus Christi and Galveston with an unusually wide wind-field, it would likely continue on toward Houston, lashing the city on the storm's right, or strongest side, with winds approaching 100 miles an hour, said Chris McKinney, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Houston.
"Unfortunately the greater Houston area is definitely going to be affected by this storm," he said about the city, which was devastated by flooding from Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001. "The effects are going to be spread out over a much larger area than might be with another storm."
On Thursday, Mayor Bill White of Houston urged all businesses to let employees leave and prepare to evacuate, and pleaded with families not to take multiple vehicles. In car-friendly Houston, evacuations during Hurricane Rita in 2005 were slowed tremendously when many families chose to take all of their cars instead of leaving some behind, the mayor said.
As of 1 p.m. Central time, the mayor had ordered people in at least eight Houston zip codes to leave immediately. Ike could drop as much as 6 to 10 inches of rain in some parts of the greater Houston area. Depending on where the storm dump most of its rain, it could inflict serious damage. Northern Houston is generally well protected, but sections closer to the city's numerous bayous are prone to flooding, said McKinney, the forecaster.
In its latest advisory Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said the center of Hurricane Ike, currently a Category 2 hurricane, was located about 440 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi and roughly 470 miles east-southeast of Galveston. It was moving to the west-northwest at a speed of nearly 10 miles per hour. Forecasters can usually determine with high accuracy where a hurricane will make landfall, but they are less adept at pinning down the intensity with which it will strike.
With memories of the $1.2 billion worth of statewide damage wrought by Hurricane Dolly in July still fresh, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas of Galveston ordered a mandatory evacuation Thursday morning for the city's population of approximately 57,000 residents. The city had previously only ordered a mandatory evacuation for the city's flood-prone west end and a voluntary evacuation for the remainder of the city.
"Those who stay, stay at their own risk," she said.
Thomas urged the estimated 4,000 residents who need special assistance evacuating because of age, disability, lack of reliable transportation or other special needs to gather at 2 p.m. local time at a city community center to board 75 buses to go to shelters in Austin.
Galveston's west end, an area of million-dollar beach front homes raised on stilts, was already experiencing flooding Thursday morning from high tides, and officials said they were expecting to lose power and basic services across the entire city when Ike makes landfall.
"We are expecting a pretty brutal event to hit us," said Jim Yarbrough, Galveston's county executive. He said he expected many people in the county to try to ride out the storm, and added "We don't think that's a wise choice."With gasoline in high demand, prices at the pump shot up about 30 percent Thursday at gas stations throughout the Texas gulf coast, even as the cost of crude oil moved in the opposite direction, falling closer and closer to $100 a barrel. Analysts said that had something to do with Ike's projected path, which could take it straight through a large swath of the country's refineries, shutting them down and creating an excess of crude oil. That typically drives the cost of crude downward.
As forecasters issued increasingly dire predictions for Houston, the state's largest city and fourth largest in the country, local authorities shut down all schools, universities and government buildings — including NASA's Johnson Space Center — and ordered mandatory evacuations for thousands of residents. Hundreds of thousands more were evacuated from several counties along the coast, jamming interstate highways with miles of slow but steadily moving bumper t0 bumper traffic.
"Prepare for the worst, pray for the best," Governor Rick Perry of Texas said at a news briefing at an emergency center in Austin. The governor has mobilized about 1,300 buses for evacuees, put 100 ambulances on standby and activated more than 7,500 National Guard troops. Many of the people boarding buses out of town said they had been through this before.
"I'm very terrified," said Aretha May, 39, a homemaker in Galveston who was waiting on a bus Thursday afternoon with her two young daughters and their dachshund. "I don't want to be nowhere around this storm."
May said she arrived in Galveston three years ago after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home in New Orleans. Her sister, Evelyn May, chose to stay behind, she said, and has not been seen since.
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ShockMode = (Isobject(Createobject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.8")))
"Nobody can tell me where she's at or if she's alive or dead," she said.
Ike is expected to make landfall early Saturday as a possible Category 3 hurricane with winds exceeding 131 miles an hour. After striking somewhere between Corpus Christi and Galveston with an unusually wide wind-field, it would likely continue on toward Houston, lashing the city on the storm's right, or strongest side, with winds approaching 100 miles an hour, said Chris McKinney, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Houston.
"Unfortunately the greater Houston area is definitely going to be affected by this storm," he said about the city, which was devastated by flooding from Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001. "The effects are going to be spread out over a much larger area than might be with another storm."
On Thursday, Mayor Bill White of Houston urged all businesses to let employees leave and prepare to evacuate, and pleaded with families not to take multiple vehicles. In car-friendly Houston, evacuations during Hurricane Rita in 2005 were slowed tremendously when many families chose to take all of their cars instead of leaving some behind, the mayor said.
As of 1 p.m. Central time, the mayor had ordered people in at least eight Houston zip codes to leave immediately. Ike could drop as much as 6 to 10 inches of rain in some parts of the greater Houston area. Depending on where the storm dump most of its rain, it could inflict serious damage. Northern Houston is generally well protected, but sections closer to the city's numerous bayous are prone to flooding, said McKinney, the forecaster.
In its latest advisory Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said the center of Hurricane Ike, currently a Category 2 hurricane, was located about 440 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi and roughly 470 miles east-southeast of Galveston. It was moving to the west-northwest at a speed of nearly 10 miles per hour. Forecasters can usually determine with high accuracy where a hurricane will make landfall, but they are less adept at pinning down the intensity with which it will strike.
With memories of the $1.2 billion worth of statewide damage wrought by Hurricane Dolly in July still fresh, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas of Galveston ordered a mandatory evacuation Thursday morning for the city's population of approximately 57,000 residents. The city had previously only ordered a mandatory evacuation for the city's flood-prone west end and a voluntary evacuation for the remainder of the city.
"Those who stay, stay at their own risk," she said.
Thomas urged the estimated 4,000 residents who need special assistance evacuating because of age, disability, lack of reliable transportation or other special needs to gather at 2 p.m. local time at a city community center to board 75 buses to go to shelters in Austin.
Galveston's west end, an area of million-dollar beach front homes raised on stilts, was already experiencing flooding Thursday morning from high tides, and officials said they were expecting to lose power and basic services across the entire city when Ike makes landfall.
"We are expecting a pretty brutal event to hit us," said Jim Yarbrough, Galveston's county executive. He said he expected many people in the county to try to ride out the storm, and added "We don't think that's a wise choice."With gasoline in high demand, prices at the pump shot up about 30 percent Thursday at gas stations throughout the Texas gulf coast, even as the cost of crude oil moved in the opposite direction, falling closer and closer to $100 a barrel. Analysts said that had something to do with Ike's projected path, which could take it straight through a large swath of the country's refineries, shutting them down and creating an excess of crude oil. That typically drives the cost of crude downward.
As of Thursday afternoon, oil companies had evacuated workers from 562, or roughly 78 percent, of the 717 manned production platforms in the gulf, the U.S. Minerals Management Services said. Altogether, as much as 96 percent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, and about 73 percent of its natural gas output, has been shut down, the agency said.
On Thursday afternoon, 75 buses rolled up to the Island Community Center in Galveston to the sound of blaring sirens and megaphones. Thousands of people lined up outside the center waiting for the 200-mile trek to shelters and evacuation centers in Austin.
The scene was dominated by hundreds of families carrying pets and other belongings, scores of people in wheelchairs or leaning on canes, and many of the homeless pushing grocery carts loaded with their possessions.
As city employees used electronic megaphones to urge people to board, many people stood in the shade or huddled on blankets in the grass.
Hurricane Dolly, a Category 2, was the last major storm to pound Texas. It delivered 16 inches of rain to the coast in July, knocked out power to 210,000 homes and businesses, and caused damage totaling at least $1.2 billion.
Hurricane Ike has already claimed about 80 lives in the Caribbean, most of them in Haiti, which had still been recovering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Gustav in late August. After hitting Haiti, Ike slammed Cuba, where it moved so quickly that it killed four people before the Cuban government, which has a history of responding well to the threat of powerful storms, could evacuate most of those in its path.
Thayer Evans reported from Galveston, Texas, and Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.
On Thursday afternoon, 75 buses rolled up to the Island Community Center in Galveston to the sound of blaring sirens and megaphones. Thousands of people lined up outside the center waiting for the 200-mile trek to shelters and evacuation centers in Austin.
The scene was dominated by hundreds of families carrying pets and other belongings, scores of people in wheelchairs or leaning on canes, and many of the homeless pushing grocery carts loaded with their possessions.
As city employees used electronic megaphones to urge people to board, many people stood in the shade or huddled on blankets in the grass.
Hurricane Dolly, a Category 2, was the last major storm to pound Texas. It delivered 16 inches of rain to the coast in July, knocked out power to 210,000 homes and businesses, and caused damage totaling at least $1.2 billion.
Hurricane Ike has already claimed about 80 lives in the Caribbean, most of them in Haiti, which had still been recovering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Gustav in late August. After hitting Haiti, Ike slammed Cuba, where it moved so quickly that it killed four people before the Cuban government, which has a history of responding well to the threat of powerful storms, could evacuate most of those in its path.
Thayer Evans reported from Galveston, Texas, and Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.
