US President George W. Bush was set to meet with his top disaster relief aides yesterday to discuss assistance to victims of Hurricane Ike, the White House said.
Since downgraded to a tropical depression by the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, Ike has flattened hundreds of homes, flooded communities and knocked out power for millions of people as it barreled across Texas.
Bush was expected to meet Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison for talks on confronting the crisis. Earlier, the president declared a major disaster in Louisiana after issuing the same declaration for Texas.
The storm’s force spread a swathe of destruction across on 800km span of the coast, largely cut off oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, and caused at least US$8 billion in onshore damage.
In Galveston, street after street was filled with water. Windows were blown out of flooded homes, broken furniture lay in the streets and tree branches littered roadways.
Some deaths were reported, Chertoff said without specifying, but Texas Governor Rick Perry cautiously voiced optimism that his state had been spared the worst.
More than 2.2 million people fled inland but more than 100,000 residents of low-lying areas — including 20,000 in Galveston alone — decided to ride out the storm despite warnings from the national weather service that a wall of water up to 6m high could spell “certain death.”
“Fortunately, the worst-case scenario that was projected in some areas did not occur, particularly in the Houston ship channel,” Perry told a press conference. “But there is plenty of damage out there.”
The center of Ike made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane early on Saturday on Galveston Island, where the sea swelled up in fury, whipsawing the country’s fourth-largest city, Houston, and prompting thousands of 911 emergency calls across the hurricane impact zone.
At 9am yesterday, tropical depression Ike was hovering over the southern state of Arkansas and was expected to move on to Missouri and other central Mississippi valley states later in the day, bringing with it torrential rains.
Texas and federal agencies launched the state’s largest search and rescue operations just hours after Ike barreled ashore.
Houston’s port is one of the world’s largest and computer models had forecast that much of it could have been submerged by the storm surge.
In Galveston and nearby Clear Lake, boats were tossed about a marina like toys, electricity poles and oak trees snapped or uprooted, siding was shorn off buildings and homes, and floodwaters covered entire neighborhoods.
Strong winds and rain raked Houston, home to the port, key refineries and a metropolitan area of more than 5 million people.
At the landmark Chase Tower, the tallest building in Texas, windows were blown off most of one face of the building, while glass, furniture and computers rained on streets below, witnesses said.
Also See: Ike abuses Texans’ Reliant Stadium, game rescheduled
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