Houston Mayor Bill White told residents to boil drinking water and to stay off the roads this morning as emergency crews work to remove the downed power lines and debris that littered the streets in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Street flooding also made many roadways impassable, White said, even for high-water vehicles.
“No matter how brave you feel, we don’t need to be rescuing people who do not need to be on the roads,” he said, noting that those rescue missions divert resources needed to help people facing storm-caused life-threatening emergencies.
Fire and EMS crews were back on the street by 9 a.m. after Ike’s powerful winds forced them to suspend services earlier this morning, Houston Fire Department Executive Assistant Chief Rick Flanagan said. The city’s 911 service has received 4,700 calls in the past 24 hours, and crews were working as quickly as possible to answer them, he said.
However, he noted the same downed power lines, billboards and trees that made driving hazardous for civilians was impeding their ability to reach some locations.
“It’s going to be a slow process for us to get out there to you this morning,” he said.
After churning Texas-ward through the Gulf of Mexico for days, Hurricane Ike’s center hit Galveston Island at 2:10 a.m. today. Its 110 mph winds — Ike was a strong Category 2 hurricane — propelled a 12.4 foot storm surge into the downtown area, leaving much of the district inundated in 6 to 7 feet of water.
Ike scoured the city’s seawall, demolishing landmarks including the Balinese Room, a historic nightclub and one-time gambling establishment dating to the 1940s. Also destroyed were Murdoch’s Pier and a Hooters restaurant, the latter said to have crashed into the sea at 1 a.m. with an explosive roar.
Galveston officials today worried about the fate of about 23,000 people who ignored a mandatory evacuation order.
“We don’t know what we’re going to find,” said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. “We hope we’ll find that the people who didn’t leave here are alive and well.”
Galveston firefighters received about 100 calls for rescue after they had ceased operations as the storm approached.
At least one death was directly attributed to the storm. The Associated Press said Montgomery County Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Norris said a woman was crushed by a tree as she slept in her home.
In Houston, Ike flooded streets, uprooted trees, sucked windows out of downtown high-rise office buildings, damaged Reliant Stadium — leading to a cancellation of the Texan’s Monday season-opener against Baltimore — and left millions of residents without electricity.
Late this morning the Harris County Toll Road Authority closed the Houston Ship Channel Bridge for safety reasons, noting the bridge would reopen when winds subsided.
Shortly before noon, the storm was approaching Lufkin in East Texas with 80 mph winds.
White today asked residents to conserve water because the city’s water supply was reaching low-pressure levels amid a power outage at a crucial pumping station. Using tap water to bathe or clean up could lower the pressure even further, he said.
CenterPoint crews had made restoring that power a top priority, he said. Residents who absolutely must drink tap water should bring it to a rapid boil for a minute, he said, in case the supply has been contaminated. There was no evidence of contamination, but it was possible since water pressure had fallen to such a low level.
Hurricane Ike knocked electricity offline for virtually the entire Houston area as it continued to roar across the area today.
CenterPoint Energy said about 90 percent of its roughly 2 million customers were in the dark before daybreak even as the storm continued to pack a 100 mph punch with the eye still near Kingwood as of 6 a.m. That means nearly 4.5 million residents were without power and doesn’t include the service area of Entergy Texas.
CenterPoint spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said downtown Houston and the Medical Center, both of which have underground power lines, were the only large areas with reliable electricity. He said CenterPoint had braced for more than half its customer base losing service, and full restoration could take “several weeks.”
Entergy spokesman David Caplan said 96 percent of its customers throughout its service area — or 380,000 – are in the dark. Two generating stations in Bridge City and Willis are down, so they and transmission lines have to be back up before crews can focus on restoring power to customers. Caplan says the process could take weeks.
“As soon as it’s safe to travel – it’s still blowing out there – we will get a couple hundred scouts to go out and do the assessments, either in vehicles or in helicopters, to fly over the lines, see where the damage is and begin to pull together a restoration plan. That could take 24 to 48 hours, depending on the weather.”
In Galveston this morning, storm battered residents who declined to evacuate gingerly crept from their homes to assess the damage.
Kim Sexton, 47, who remained in Galveston with her father, who refused to leave, was grateful for surviving safely. “I knew it was going to be bad, but not like this,” she said. “But we’re OK. We made it through the storm, Baby!”
In Galveston’s Central City neighborhood, 79-year-old Ernestina Espinoza was awakened by the storm at 1:30 a.m. When she stepped from her bed, water came higher than her knees.
“I said, ‘Oh no!’” she recalled today. “I started crying.”
Galveston Fire Chief Michael Varela, speaking to reporters in the San Luis Hotel, where the city’s mayor and emergency personnel are staying, said they would respond to needs on the west end of the island first, since it was hardest hit.
At least eight to 10 feet of water was on the streets when they ceased operations, and the second half of the storm, which came after that point, was far worse than the first, he said.
Asked how hard he believed Galveston had been hit, Varela said: ”For us, one to 10, I’d say it’s a 10.
”I was back here in Alicia (in 1983), and we didn’t have this type of water, so this is definitely a worse storm than we’ve had.”
City Manager Steve LeBlanc went so far as to ask the media not to photograph “certain things” in the aftermath, referring to the possibility of dead bodies.
In Austin, state emergency officials said water was encroaching from both ends of the island as well as over the seawall. The University of Texas Medical Branch was taking on water, officials said.
Vee Thrasher saw the storm surge first-hand today. After the ceiling caved in on her mother’s bedroom in their second floor Galveston apartment, Thrasher moved into the bathroom and took in some neighbors from the first floor, which had already flooded.
The water reached about halfway up the staircase leading up to her apartment, which is across the street from Seawall Boulevard in the middle of the island, near the famed 61st Street Pier, which was washed away.
”The wind, it’s terrible,” said Thrasher, whose mother was visiting her from Germany. ”It keeps shaking the building. I just moved here a few months ago. This is not my idea of fun.”
Officials in Brazoria County said as many as 35 percent of residents in mandatory evacuation zones stayed behind, or about 67,000. That would put about 90,000 Texans in potentially surge-susceptible areas in the two counties.
LeBlanc said he didn’t know how long it would take before evacuated residents could return. The city may briefly allow them back in to check on their homes, but will then ask them to leave again until the city is safe.
Officials did not know how many Harris County residents ignored mandatory evacuation orders, but Emmett said those people were in his prayers.
Asked if more areas should have been evacuated, Emmett said that would have resulted in a chaotic mess as large numbers of evacuees tried to return home to assess the damage to their properties.
Galveston ordered an 8 p.m. curfew which ended at 5 a.m. today but will continue along the same overnight schedule for Galveston and Pelican Island through Monday morning.
“We’re going to make sure these homes are safe when (evacuees) return,” said Thomas, the mayor.
In Harris County, a curfew started at 7 p.m. and was in place until 6 a.m. today for the areas covered by the mandatory evacuation. The Harris County curfew also will be in effect Saturday night for the nine evacuated ZIP codes only.
Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt and Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said they would be strictly enforcing those curfews to protect evacuees’ homes.
The anticipated surge prompted Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to remark: “This is pretty much a worst-case scenario for flooding the Gulf Coast area.”
FEMA anticipates about 100,000 homes will be flooded.
”It is a potentially catastrophic hurricane,” Chertoff said. ”We will move as swiftly as possible to relieve suffering.”
Once Ike moves through, thousands of people could be without power and food, said FEMA Administrator David Paulison. Emergency personnel have shipped in 2.5 million MREs (meals ready to eat) in Texas, and another 3 million will be brought in, he said.
The Red Cross expects to feed 500,000 people.
Ike, when its core was still 135 miles at sea, indirectly claimed its first victim Friday when a 10-year-old Montgomery boy was killed by a falling branch as his parents cut down a tree.
Montgomery County authorities said Joel Caleb, was killed about 9 a.m. as his father cut down the tree, apparently in preparation for the coming storm. The boy was struck in the head.
The boy was dead on arrival at Tomball Regional Medical Center.
A 19-year-old Corpus Christi man was presumed drowned after storm surge from Hurricane Ike swept him from a jetty, Corpus Christi Police Chief Bryan Smith said.
Three people were injured in a two-alarm fire at Brennan’s restaurant early today, a Midtown institution on Smith Street.
In an early bit of good news, the Coast Guard said today that the disabled Cypriot freighter Antalina and her 22 crewmembers were weathered the storm’s passage and the ship was awaiting a tow back to port.
The ship, loaded with petroleum coke floated helplessly as Hurricane Ike approached, and a rescue attempt was unsuccessful.
“The rescue of these 22 crewmembers was one of our highest priorities, but now that we know they are safe, we can dedicate all our aircraft and resources to people along the Texas coast who may need rescuing after the Ike passes,” said Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry, assistant public affairs officer for the Eighth Coast Guard District.
