Ike Bears Down on Houston Area As Residents Take Precautions

September 12, 2008

DALLAS, TX (WALL STREET JOURNAL) - Hurricane Ike rattled nerves up and down the Texas coastline Friday as the 5.6 million people living in and around Houston learned they could bear the brunt of winds above 100 miles per hour and a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet.

White waves crashed over a seawall and tossed a disabled 584-foot freighter in rough water as it steamed toward Texas. Storm surge and waves were swamping parts of Galveston Island as Hurricane Ike plows toward the island, and the storm could strengthen to Category 3 before the eye hits the coast sometime around midnight Friday, reports the National Hurricane Center.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Ike was centered about 135 miles east-southeast of Galveston and moving west-northwest at 12 miles an hour. The NHC expects Ike to veer slightly north on a course that would put the eye ashore in the area of Galveston. Winds remain 105 miles an hour, but the NHC says Ike could gain Category 3 strength before the eye comes ashore.

After delaying evacuations in the hope the nation's sixth-largest metropolitan area would dodge Ike's worst, Houston officials found themselves staring down a huge storm that spread over an even larger area than 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

The storm's projected path put its strongest winds and highest tides on a crash course with the Houston area's massive complexes of refineries and petrochemical plants, as well as one of the nation's largest ports inside the Houston Ship Channel.

Hurricane warnings were in effect over a 400-mile stretch of coastline from south of Corpus Christi to Morgan City, La. Tropical storm warnings extended south almost to the Mexican border and east to the Mississippi-Alabama line, including New Orleans.

"One of the nightmare scenarios in the world of hurricane watching is a hurricane hitting the Houston shipping channel....And we're coming pretty close to that," said Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Ike's path and size create "a substantial risk of flooding for hundreds of thousands of residents' and could damage "a lot of the energy and chemical resources that we depend upon in this country," Mr. Chertoff said.

The National Weather Service warned residents of smaller structures on Galveston they could "face certain death" if they ignored an order to evacuate; most had complied, along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Texans in counties up and down the coastline. But in a move designed to avoid highway gridlock as the storm closed in, most of Houston's two million residents hunkered down and were ordered not to leave.

Denita Landrum and her husband, David, hammered wood over the windows of their weathered white bungalow in Freeport, Texas, a nearly deserted town where the silver pipes of chemical plants dominate the skyline. "I've never been though anything like this," said Ms. Landrum.

Freeport is the site of Dow Chemical Co.'s colossal chemical complex, which covers more than 5,000 acres and consists of 75 plants, many of which stock or produce large quantities of dangerous chemicals. The plants began shutting down Thursday morning, said spokeswoman Gina Gibbs-Foster.

Chemical-industry officials said they had detailed plans in place to weather a storm without danger, and noted that their plants came through Hurricanes Katrina and Rita safely, although there was an oil spill in St. Bernard Parish on the outskirts of New Orleans after Katrina.

Forecasters expect Ike to be a Category 3 hurricane. "The high water can be a major problem," said M. Sam Mannan, executive director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University. "It doesn't take a lot of water to wash away a big car or cause damage to tanks."

The Environmental Protection Agency said it had a team of 50 people in Dallas ready to help monitor spills or emissions, and other groups poised to ensure the safety of drinking water.

"When a powerful storm of this size hits a metro area of this size -- and bear in mind, we're the fourth-largest city in the nation -- you can expect significant economic damage," said Joe Stinebaker of the emergency-management team in Harris County, which includes Houston.

In Galveston, which anchors the east end of a thin barrier island hugging the coast southeast of Houston, people jammed gas stations and convenience stores on last-second shopping sprees after city officials ordered an evacuation of the entire island.

A long line of cars and recreational vehicles was piling up on the causeway off the island, bringing traffic to a crawl. A Home Depot parking lot was crammed with emergency workers after 120 ambulances were called up to ferry people from the University of Texas hospital.

With hastily packed suitcases, pets and large bags of food, some people gathered at a community center to board buses bound for Austin. "They told us we didn't have to leave, and now all of a sudden it's go now? This is crazy," said Guadalupe Serna, waiting with her handicapped daughter and niece.

Traffic was heavy, but it appeared to be moving smoothly on the major highways out of town. "Things are so much better now, believe me," said Harish Krishnarao, Galveston's housing director, as he waited for 130 buses that would take an estimated 3,000 people to Austin.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed more than 500 emergency workers to the area, with more on standby, and readied some 750,000 meals, 160,000 cots, 30 medical-assistance teams and 21 search-and-rescue boat teams.

Volunteer groups are stretched thin after responding to damage that Hurricane Gustav caused two weeks ago. While Gustav didn't flood New Orleans, as many feared, it left swaths of Louisiana without power, including the capital, Baton Rouge, and devastated some rural areas.

Though the Salvation Army was still serving 40,000 meals in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, by Thursday it began moving 18 mobile canteens from Louisiana to Tyler, Texas, said Jeff Jellets, a disaster coordinator for the group. The group is also serving meals to emergency workers in San Antonio and is gearing up to feed evacuees.

For some, Ike is a business opportunity. Rick Conley drove to Corpus Christi from Austin with three other carpenters and a trailer filled with stacked plywood, offering to board up windows for $30 apiece. By Thursday afternoon, they had boarded up five houses, and had lined up jobs for 17 more.

"I lived in Florida for over 20 years, and I know how people feel" about hurricanes, Mr. Conley said.