The Associated Press provides this raw video of Hurricane Ike's aftermath in Houston:
Howling ashore with 110 mph winds, Hurricane Ike ravaged the Texas coast, flooding thousands of homes and businesses, shattering windows in Houston's skyscrapers and knocking out power to millions of people:
Ike passed over Houston before dawn, blowing out windows in the state's tallest building, the 75-story Chase Tower. Behind splintered shards, desks were exposed to the pounding morning rains, metal blinds hung in a twisted heap from some windows, and smoky black glass covered the streets below.It could have been worse. Was the National Weather Service's "certain death" warning overdone?[. . .]
Shortly before noon, Houston police cars prowled downtown, ordering citizens off the streets over bullhorns: "Please clear the area! Go home!" Chunks of glass were still plunging from Chase Tower, threatening to injure nearby gawkers.
[. . .]
In Louisiana, Ike's storm surge inundated thousands of homes and businesses. In Plaquemines Parish, near New Orleans, a sheriff's spokesman said levees were overtopped and floodwaters were higher than either hurricane Katrina or Rita.
[. . .]
Ike landed near the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Fears of shortages pushed wholesale gasoline prices to around $4.85 a gallon, up from $3 earlier in the week, and at least eight refineries were shut down. But it was too soon to know how they fared.
Fires burned untended across Galveston and Houston. Brennan's, a landmark downtown Houston restaurant, was destroyed by flames when firefighters were thwarted by high winds. Fire officials said a restaurant worker and his young daughter were taken to a hospital in critical condition with burns over 70 percent of their bodies.
[. . .]
As Ike moved north later Saturday morning, the storm dropped to a Category 1 hurricane with winds of around 80 mph. At 11 a.m. EDT, the center was about 20 miles north-northeast of Huntsville, Texas, and moving north at 16 mph. It was expected to turn toward Arkansas later in the day and become a tropical storm.
More than 3 million customers lost power in southeast Texas, and some 140,000 more in Louisiana. That's in addition to the 60,000 still without power from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav. Suppliers warned it could be weeks before all service was restored.
Comments