Continue reading »]]> (AP) Hurricane Ike’s winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

In the days before and after the deadly storm, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Louisiana and Texas. The hardest hit places were industrial centers near Houston and Port Arthur, Texas, as well as oil production facilities off Louisiana’s coast, according to the AP’s analysis.

“We are dealing with a multitude of different types of pollution here … everything from diesel in the water to gasoline to things like household chemicals,” said Larry Chambers, a petty officer with the U.S. Coast Guard Command Center in Pasadena, Texas.

The Coast Guard, with the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies, has responded to more than 3,000 pollution reports associated with the storm and its surge along the upper Texas coast. Most callers complain about abandoned propane tanks, paint cans and other hazardous materials containers turning up in marshes, backyards and other places.

No major oil spills or hazardous materials releases have been identified, but nearly 1,500 sites still need to be cleaned up.

The Coast Guard’s National Response Center in Washington collects information on oil spills and chemical and biological releases and passes it to agencies working on the ground. The AP analyzed all reports received by the center from Sept. 11 through Sept. 18 for Louisiana and Texas, providing an early snapshot of Ike’s environmental toll.

With the storm approaching, refineries and chemical plants shut down as a precaution, burning off hundreds of thousands of pounds of organic compounds and toxic chemicals. In other cases, power failures sent chemicals such as ammonia directly into the atmosphere. Such accidental releases probably will not result in penalties by regulators because the releases are being blamed on the storm.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also suspended all rules, including environmental ones, that would inhibit or prevent companies preparing for or responding to Ike.

Power outages also caused sewage pipes to stop flowing. Elsewhere, the storm’s surge dredged up smelly and oxygen-deprived marsh mud, which killed fish and caused residents to complain of nausea and headaches from the odor.

At times, a new spill or release was reported to the Coast Guard every five minutes to 10 minutes. Some were extremely detailed, such as this report from Sept. 14: “Caller is making a report of a 6-by-4-foot container that was found floating in the Houston Ship Channel. Caller states the container was also labeled ‘UM 3264,’ which is a corrosive material.” The caller most likely meant UN3264, an industrial coding that refers to a variety of different acids.

State and federal officials have collected thousands of abandoned drums, paint cans and other containers.

Other reports were more vague. One caller reported a sheen from an underwater pipeline and said the substance was “spewing” from the pipe.

The AP’s analysis found that, by far, the most common contaminant left in Ike’s wake was crude oil – the lifeblood and main industry of both Texas and Louisiana. In the week of reports analyzed, enough crude oil was spilled nearly to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and more could be released, officials said, as platforms and pipelines were turned back on.

The Minerals Management Service, which oversees oil production in federal waters offshore, said the storm destroyed at least 52 oil platforms of roughly 3,800 in the Gulf of Mexico. Thirty-two more were severely damaged. But there was only one confirmed report of an oil spill – a leak of 8,400 gallons that officials said left no trace because it dissipated with the winds and currents.

(Left: A sheen of oil is seen around a pump jack surrounded by flood waters, Sept. 14, 2008 in High Island, Texas.)

Air contaminants were the second-most common release, mostly from the chemical plants and refineries along the coast.

About half the crude oil was reported spilled at a facility operated by St. Mary Land and Exploration Co. on Goat Island, Texas, a spit of uninhabited land north of the heavily damaged Bolivar Peninsula. The surge from the storm flooded the plant, leveling its dirt containment wall and snapping off the pipes connecting its eight storage tanks, which held the oil and water produced from two wells in Galveston Bay.

By the time the company reached the wreckage by boat more than 24 hours after Ike’s landfall, the tanks were empty. Only a spattering of the roughly 266,000 gallons of oil spilled was left, and that is already cleaned up, according to Greg Leyendecker, the company’s regional manager. The rest vanished, likely into the Gulf of Mexico.

Read more on:

• 500,000 Gallons Of Oil Spilled Due To Ike, AP Study: Hurricane Destroyed Oil Platforms, Tossed Storage Tanks And Punctured Pipelines In Gulf – CBS News

Continue reading »]]> Residents of Galveston Island, Texas, were returning to their homes Wednesday, almost three weeks after Hurricane Ike devastated Texas’ Gulf Coast.

But living conditions will remain rough, city officials stressed at an afternoon news conference. Most residents will not have electricity for another month, City Manager Steve LeBlanc said.

“People need to assess their own personal situation,” he said. “If they can tolerate these conditions, then they’ll stay.”

The return started early, with the only major highway leading onto Galveston Island backed up with cars in the predawn hours. Headlights stretched for miles.

Residents of Galveston Island’s heavily damaged west end were able to return Monday, but only to assess the damage and leave that evening.

City officials have warned residents returning Wednesday not to expect much in the way of services.

Dr. Mark Guidry, head of the Galveston County Health District, urged residents who have “any medical condition that requires frequent care and the possibility of hospitalization” to delay their return until the island’s public health and medical infrastructure is in better shape.

And he urged parents to keep their children away until debris fields have been cleared.

Anyone who chooses to return, he said, should carry plenty of hand sanitizer; thick, long-sleeved shirts; long pants; protective gloves and footwear; face masks; mosquito spray; bleach and other cleaning supplies; first-aid kits; charged cell phones to call 911; full tanks of gas and bottled, boiled or treated drinking water.

He predicted that they will find “enormous” traffic congestion because many signals don’t work.

The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston has “only the most rudimentary of medical resources,” warned Dr. Joan Richardson, the institution’s emergency preparedness officer.

“We have no capability of hospitalizing anyone as we have no hospital beds that are open,” she said. Nor can workers perform surgery or deliver babies, she said.

Anyone requiring anything beyond basic first aid will be stabilized “as best we can” and evacuated by air, she said.

LeBlanc urged anyone returning home to refrain from turning on gas or electricity before checking for leaks or short circuits.

He said special care should be taken in houses flooded by more than 10 or 12 inches of water, the height of wall plugs.

“You don’t want to turn on the electricity, because there may be corrosion in those circuits, and it may start a fire, and we have limited fire protection,” he said.

Any gas meter or regulator that was submerged must be replaced, he said. Regulators, which reduce pressure from gas lines entering the house, may not work after being submerged, resulting in the flow of too much gas, LeBlanc said.

“If that’s the case, and there was a leak, you could have a serious fire and an explosion.”

At least 40 fires have been reported, many of them because of electrical problems, he said.

About 400 to 500 law enforcement officials are on the island to maintain order and to enforce the 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, LeBlanc said.

“We will have order, and we will maintain order on this island,” he said.

Though the search-and-rescue effort is complete, about 50 residents remain missing, he said.

Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas was in Washington this week to ask a Senate ad hoc committee on disaster recovery for about $2 billion in federal aid, LeBlanc said.

Galveston took a direct hit from Ike when it barreled ashore September 13 as a Category 2 storm. Despite orders to evacuate, about 20,000 of Galveston’s 58,000 residents stayed in their homes. Many of those who left went to shelters.

Residents returning to crippled Galveston Island – CNN.com

Continue reading »]]> GALVESTON, Texas — A massive Hurricane Ike sent white waves crashing over a seawall and tossed a disabled 584-foot freighter in rough water as it steamed toward Texas Friday, threatening to devastate coastal towns and batter America’s fourth-largest city.

Ike’s eye was forecast to strike somewhere near Galveston late Friday or early Saturday then head inland for Houston, but the sprawling weather system nearly as big as Texas was already buffeting the Gulf Coast and causing flooding in areas still recovering from Labor Day’s Hurricane Gustav.

Because of its ominous size, storm surge and flooding were the greatest threats. In unusually strong language, forecasters even warned of “certain death” for stalwarts who insisted on staying in Galveston; 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 2 million residents hunkered down and were ordered not to leave.

White waves as tall as 15 feet were already crashing over Galveston’s seawall. It was enough to scare away Tony Munoz and his wife, Jennifer, who went down to the water to take pictures, then decided that riding out the storm wasn’t a good idea after all.

“We started seeing water come up on the streets, then we saw this. We just loaded up everything, got the pets, we’re leaving,” Tony Munoz, 33, said. “I’ve been through storms before but this is different.”

Ike’s 105-mph winds and potential 50-foot waves initially stopped the Coast Guard from attempting a risky helicopter rescue of 22 people aboard a 584-foot freighter that broke down in the path of the storm about 90 miles southeast of Galveston, Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry said. The ship was hauling petroleum coke used to fuel furnaces at steel plants.

But midday Friday, the Coast Guard changed its mind and decided to stage a rescue. Petty Officer Tom Atkeson said rescue swimmers and Coast Guard and Air Force aircraft were on their way to reach the ship.

Daniel Brown, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center, said Ike was about 600 miles across, roughly the distance between Houston and Panama City, Fla. “It takes up almost the northern Gulf,” he said.

The hurricane center said tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph extended across 550 miles, and hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph stretched for 240 miles. A typical storm has tropical storm-force winds stretching only 300 miles.

If the storm stays on its projected path, it could head up the Houston ship channel and through Galveston Bay, which Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff characterized as a nightmare situation because of Ike’s size and likely storm surge.

“I think this certainly falls in the category of pretty much a worst-case scenario,” Chertoff told a news briefing Friday. He said there were adequate relief supplies to handle it, however.

As many as 100,000 homes could potentially be affected by flooding, according to Chertoff, who called the storm’s potential impact “catastrophic.”

In spite of the warnings to evacuate, a stubborn few defied orders to leave. Emory Sallie, 44, of Galveston, said he had braved storms in the past and didn’t think Ike would be any different. He didn’t believe the dire warnings — he was more worried about the wind, not the flooding.

“If the island is going to disappear it has to be a tsunami,” he said, as he walked along the block where his home is located, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. “If it ain’t your time you ain’t going anywhere.”

In Surfside Beach, a small coastal town of about 805, water was already knee-deep in the streets and skies were growing increasingly dark.

Police were going around in a dump truck trying to get holdouts to evacuate while there was still time. The police chief asked one stubborn couple to write their names and Social Security numbers on their forearms in black magic marker “in case something bad were to happen.” They soon changed their minds, and police were wading an aluminum boat through floodwaters to rescue them.

About 60 miles inland in Houston, officials said residents should not flock to the roadways en masse, creating the same kind of gridlock that cost lives — and a little political capital — when Hurricane Rita threatened Houston in 2005.

Some evacuation orders were in effect for low-lying sections of the Houston area, but for the most part, people stayed. Large hospitals in the city moved some patients away from windows, but they did not send them away.

Three days before landfall, Rita bloomed into a Category 5 and tracked toward the city. City and Harris County officials told Houstonians to hit the road, even while the population of Galveston Island was still clogging the freeways.

The evacuation itself wound up far more dangerous than the storm: 110 people died during the effort, while the eventual Category 4 storm killed nine. Houston ultimately was spared a direct hit as the storm took a last-minute turn to the northeast and landed on the Texas-Louisiana line.

In southwest Louisiana, Ike breached levees Friday, threatening thousands of homes of fishermen, oil-field workers, farmers and others. The area south of Houma was the site of the worst flooding. By early afternoon, crews were attempting to plug four breaches.

“We’ve got a bad situation,” said Windell Curole, levee manager for Terrebonne Parish. “There’s a lot of levee we can’t deal with — hundreds of feet. Rita-like flooding is a possibility.”

Rita followed a similar route to Ike’s — slowly crossing the Gulf from southeast to northwest. Rita’s storm surge pushed salt water up to 20 miles inland.

Forecasters expected Ike to push tidal surges of up to 19 feet into Cameron Parish, a sparsely populated area of marshland that borders Texas. In Lake Charles, a 13-foot storm surge was possible.

Texans were getting hit from both sides, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lowell, a Pacific system, dumped nearly 8 inches of rain on Lubbock in 24 hours, flooding homes and roads. Some businesses closed, and Texas Tech University and other schools canceled Friday classes.

Should Ike strengthen to a Category 3, it would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago.

For Houston — a city filled with gleaming skyscrapers, the nation’s biggest refinery and NASA’s Johnson Space Center — it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage.

Galveston, a barrier island and beach town about 10 feet above sea level, was also the scene of the nation’s deadliest hurricane, the great storm of 1900 that left at least 6,000 dead. But that also was before officials had the ability to warn residents that a hurricane was coming, and before the seawall was built to protect the community.

At 2 p.m. EDT Friday, the Category 2 storm was centered about 165 miles southeast of Galveston, moving to the west-northwest near 12 mph. Forecasters warned it could become a Category 3 storm with winds of at least 111 mph before the eye strikes land.

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.

The oil and gas industry was closely watching the storm because it was headed straight for the nation’s biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants.

The upper Texas coast accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity, and many platforms were shut down. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of vast shortages. That was up substantially from about $3.25 on Wednesday and less than $3 on Tuesday.

Continue reading »]]> As Hurricane Ike bears down on Galveston and Houston, two Texas hospitals are bracing for the storm.

“We’re at emergency status, only essential personnel remain at the hospital,” Marsha Canright, director of public relations at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, told FOXNews.com. “The neonatal babies are going to San Antonio by air. We stopped taking new patients on Monday. We just have very ill people at the hospital.”

The hospital, which had about 600 patients at the beginning of the week, is now down to about 450.

Canright said the hospital also housed 95 inmates from Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and they were evacuated to a facility in Tyler, which is north of Galveston.

Since the hospital has switched from paper files to electronic files, it is much easier to transfer a patient’s medical records during the hurricane evacuation, Canright said.

Gale Smith, a spokeswoman for The Methodist Hospital System in Houston, said they prepare all year for a crisis such as this.

As of Friday morning, the hospital still had 700 patients in admission, she said.

“As far as our patients, there are no plans to evacuate them,” Smith said.

Both hospitals plan to keep their emergency rooms open. There will be some Galveston residents who won’t evacuate, Canright said, and the trauma center will be ready and able to accommodate anyone who has been injured by the hurricane.

“When Rita hit two years ago, we still had fires, and people were burned, or cut by flying glass, and they needed to be treated,” Canright said. “We expect those things to occur.”

After Tropical Storm Allison hit in 2001, Smith said The Methodist Hospital installed a high-tech flood protection system.

“We installed flood doors around the perimeter of the hospital campus. And in preparation of Ike, some of these doors are already closed, and we will close additional ones as we see the need.”

Both hospitals have a number of generators on upper-level floors, which are well above the “strike range,” and Houston’s Methodist Hospital installed submarine doors in a tunnel system underneath the hospital.

“Our generators could run for days,” Smith said. “We are already very well-equipped. If more patients come in, we will not turn them away.”

If you live in the path of Hurricane Ike, and plan on evacuating from your home, remember to take these three things with you:

1. Any medicine you might need. If you have time to get refills, do so, but if not, carry an empty prescription bottle to help a doctor know what kind of medicine to give you.

2. ANY medical records you have. “Sometimes this is just as important as anything else,” said Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing editor of FOXNews.com.

3. Lots of bottled water. “[Water] is the first thing to become contaminated,” Alvarez said, “and it’s very hot and humid. You will need it.”

Continue reading »]]> (CNN) — Residents living in single-family homes in some parts of coastal Texas face “certain death” if they do not heed orders to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Ike’s arrival, the National Weather Service said Thursday night.

The unusually strong wording came in a weather advisory regarding storm surge along the shoreline of Galveston Bay, which could see maximum water levels of 15 to 22 feet, the agency said.

“All neighborhoods … and possibly entire coastal communities … will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide,” the advisory said. “Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes will face certain death.”

The maximum water level forecasts in nearby areas, including the shoreline of Matagorda Bay and the Gulf-facing coastline from Sargent to High Island, ranged from 5 to 8 feet. But authorities warned that tide levels could begin rising Friday morning along the upper Texas coast and along the shorelines of the bays.

The advisory summoned memories of the language used to describe 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks … if not longer,” an advisory issued at the time said. “The vast majority of native trees will be snapped or uprooted. Only the heartiest will remain standing.”

The Ike advisory follows comes on the heels of similarly urgent messages earlier Thursday from federal authorities, who warned of a “massive storm” that could affect roughly 40 percent of the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“Do not take this storm lightly,” Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Thursday afternoon. “This is not a storm to gamble with. It is large; it is powerful; it carries a lot of water.”

Chertoff and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said their efforts were focused on evacuations as Ike moved northwest at 12 mph across the central Gulf of Mexico with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph.

Chertoff also urged people not to succumb to “hurricane fatigue,” referring to concerns that authorities were overestimating Ike’s potential impact.

“Unless you’re fatigued with living, I suggest you want to take seriously a storm of this size and scale,” he said Thursday.

Houston Mayor Bill White said he’s heard that people who live in areas under a mandatory evacuation order say they plan to stay in their homes. He strongly urged against it.

“If you think you want to ride something out, and people are talking about a 20-foot wall of water coming at you, then you better think again,” White said.

At 5 p.m. Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said a hurricane warning was in effect between Morgan City, Louisiana, and Baffin Bay, Texas. A warning means hurricane conditions are likely within 24 hours.

Ike’s forecast track was through Galveston and the Houston metro area as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph. Currently a Category 2 storm about 700 miles across, Ike could make landfall near Galveston Island as early as Saturday morning.

At 11 p.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 115 miles from Ike’s center, and tropical storm-force winds extend outward up to 275 miles.

The storm was centered 445 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, and about 340 miles east-southeast of Galveston, and was moving west-northwest at near 10 mph.

Roughly 3.5 million people live in the hurricane’s potential impact zone, FEMA Administrator David Paulison said Thursday.

In Galveston, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas told the island’s 60,000 people that they should leave. By 7:30 ET, the city had finished evacuating to Austin thousands of residents who needed assistance leaving because of age, disability or lack of reliable transportation.

Mandatory evacuations remained in effect for low-lying coastal areas northeast and southwest of Galveston, in Chambers, Matagorda and Brazoria counties.

Some Brazoria County residents said they didn’t want to leave but realized it was in their best interest to do so.

“You don’t have a choice when you have kids,” Deborah Davis of Freeport told CNN affiliate KPRC-TV in Houston.

Farther inland, about 100,000 residents in low-lying areas surrounding Houston began evacuating Thursday afternoon as Ike headed for the Texas coast, officials said.

But the remaining 4 million residents were told they could stay home, even as government offices and schools prepared to close Friday in Houston in anticipation of the hurricane.

“We are only evacuating areas subject to a storm surge,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief executive officer. “Yes, we know you will lose electricity. But you’re not in danger of losing your life, so stay put.”

Ships in port were told to leave, said Port of Houston spokeswoman Linda Whitlock. The area’s two major airports, George Bush Intercontinental and William P. Hobby, also halted all commercial flights.

More than 1,300 inmates from the Texas Correctional Institutions Division’s Stevenson Unit in Cuero were being evacuated to facilities in Beeville and Kenedy, Perry’s office said, and 597 were transferred from the substance abuse Glossbrenner Unit in San Diego, in south Texas, to Dilley.

Continue reading »]]> (CBS/AP) Cars and trucks streamed inland and chemical companies buttoned up their plants Thursday as a gigantic Hurricane Ike took aim at the heart of the U.S. refining industry and threatened to send a wall of water crashing toward Houston.

Nearly 1 million people along the Texas coast were ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm, which was expected to strike late Friday or early Saturday. But in a calculated risk aimed at avoiding total gridlock, authorities told most people in the nation’s fourth-largest city to just hunker down.

Ike was steering almost directly for Galveston and, beyond that, Houston, where gleaming skyscrapers, the nation’s biggest refinery and NASA’s Johnson Space Center lie in areas vulnerable to wind and floodwaters. Forecasters said the storm was likely to come ashore as a Category 3, with winds up to 130 mph.

But the storm was so big, it could inflict a punishing blow even in those areas that do not get a direct hit. Hurricane force winds spread out 200 miles from the eye, reports The Early Show weather anchor Dave Price.

Forecasters also warned that because of Ike’s size and the state’s shallow coastal waters, it could produce a surge, or wall of water, 20 feet high, and waves of perhaps 50 feet. It could also dump 10 inches or more of rain.

“It’s a big storm,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. “I cannot overemphasize the danger that is facing us. It’s going to do some substantial damage. It’s going to knock out power. It’s going to cause massive flooding.”

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.

Most of the evacuations were limited to sections of Harris County outside Houston, as well as nearby bayous and Galveston Bay. But the 2 million residents of the city itself and 1 million in other areas of the county were asked to remain at home.

“We are still saying: Please shelter in place, or to use the Texas expression, hunker down,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief administrator. “For the vast majority of people who live in our area, stay where you are. The winds will blow and they’ll howl and we’ll get a lot of rain, but if you lose power and need to leave, you can do that later.”

Authorities hoped to avoid the panic of three years ago, when evacuations ordered in advance of Hurricane Rita sent millions scurrying in fright and caused a monumental traffic jam so big that cars ran out of gas or overheated. Ultimately, the evacuation proved deadlier than the storm itself. A total of 110 people died during the exodus, including 23 nursing home patients whose bus burst into flames while stuck in traffic.

This time, traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the freeway leading away from Galveston immediately after the evacuation order, but by late afternoon, many evacuees had made it past Houston, to the north. And just in time: Waves were already inundating the beach on one end of Galveston Island.

Some gas stations began running out of fuel, but fuel trucks were called in to replenish them.

Houston Mayor Bill White said one of the lessons of Rita mess was that too many people fled who didn’t need to. Instead, he asked residents to protect their homes.

“Think how your barbecue could become a flying object,” he said.

But other authorities are concerned that memories of the frantic and gridlocked Hurricane Rita evacuation will lead some to stay put, reports Price.

“There’s a lot of people who will choose to ride it out,” County Judge James Yarborough told CBS News. We don’t think that’s a wise choice.”

At 11 p.m. EDT, the storm was centered about 340 miles southeast of Galveston, moving to the west-northwest at 12 mph. Top sustained winds were 100 mph.

NASA closed the Johnson Space Center, including Mission Control, and set up temporary quarters Thursday near Austin and Huntsville, Ala., to watch over the international space station until the storm threat passes. Most NASA aircraft at Ellington Field, just north of Johnson, have been flown to a facility in El Paso.

Concerns that Ike could cripple offshore rigs prompted oil companies to shut down more than 75 percent of their operations in the region, reports Price.

The upper Texas coast accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity.

Wholesale gasoline prices spiked 30 percent Thursday, or nearly $1 a gallon, out of fear of what Ike might do. That means motorists can expect higher prices at the pump, though how much higher depends largely on how long refineries are shuttered after the storm.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil Co. began halting operations as Ike closed in. Dow Chemical Co. started closing up its enormous Freeport complex, home to 75 plants producing some 27 billion pounds of chemical products each year.

BASF, the world’s largest chemical company with 14 manufacturing sites in the Gulf Coast region, also began shutting down some operations. Spokesman Daniel Pepitone said each site has a hurricane plan that outlines detailed steps for securing plants, and precautions such as tying down hoses and taking down scaffolding began days ago.

Industry officials said their refineries and chemical plants are designed to withstand high winds. But power outages could still knock them out of service.

Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage.

Ike is huge, taking up nearly 40 percent of the Gulf. The National Hurricane Center said tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph extended across more than 510 miles, and hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph stretched for 220 miles. A typical storm has tropical storm-force winds stretching only 300 miles.

Because of its great size, storm surge and gigantic waves are the biggest risk, said Hugh Willoughby, former director of the federal government’s hurricane research division. The larger the storm, the longer it hits and the higher waves can build.

And because the water is so shallow along the Texas coast, the waves pile up, creating a big storm surge, he said.

“We’re not talking about gently rising water,” Harris County’s Emmett said. “We’re talking about a surge that will come into your homes.”

Authorities put the frail and elderly on buses headed for shelters. And thousands of Texas prison inmates were also moved out of the storm’s path.

Officials worried that after Labor Day’s Hurricane Gustav proved to be a dud in Texas, people wouldn’t take the warnings seriously.

“The most important message I can send is do not take this storm lightly,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “Do not look back at Gustav and say, `Well, that turned out to be not as bad as some people feared, therefore, I’m going to gamble with this storm.”‘

Some stayed put anyway.

Johnny Tyson, 33, his girlfriend, Martha Jones, 38, and her three children planned to ignore the order to leave. Tyson, loading into his truck plywood he bought at a Home Depot in Beaumont, complained that officials waited too long to call for an evacuation.

“We left for Gustav and we didn’t have to leave,” Jones said. “They cut all the roads and bottleneck everybody into one road and make traffic worse.” He added: “Everybody and their momma is trying to leave right now.”

Continue reading »]]> Hurricane Ike took aim at Cuba today after leaving 20 people dead in Haiti, where the death toll from a succession of powerful storms in the past few weeks now tops 600.

Ike was downgraded today from a Category Four hurricane to a still potentially devastating Category Three, as Cuba evacuated hundreds of thousands in a frantic bid to evade the storm’s fury.

Officials in Haiti, meanwhile, continued aid operations in the flood-stricken town of Gonaives, which has borne the brunt of recent flooding and seen untold misery and destruction.

Ike plowed across the low-lying Turks and Caicos overnight as a powerful Category Four storm, causing some injuries and extensive damage on the British territory and tourist haven, Bahamas radio reported.

The hurricane then raked the south-eastern Bahamian island of Great Inagua, toppling trees, blowing off roofs, causing an island-wide power failure and forcing many of its 1,000 residents to seek refuge in shelters, a resident told AFP by telephone.

With winds decreasing slightly to 195 km/h, the storm is forecast to roar ashore in eastern Cuba tonight as a Category Three “major hurricane” on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.

But the immediate concern is its effect on Haiti, where a humanitarian crisis is unfolding after flooding from Ike and previous storms Hanna and Gustav left around 600 people dead and thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.

With winds near 215 km/h, the storm’s outer bands lashed Haiti’s vulnerable north-west coast with torrential rain.

Hundreds of bodies were found in flood-prone Gonaives, a atown of 350,000 in north-western Haiti, after a five-metre wall of water and mud engulfed much of the town. The storm followed on the heels of Hanna, last week’s massive storm.

United Nations peacekeepers yesterday evacuated several thousand residents from Gonaives, a local official said, but thousands more are still awaiting relief.

About 650,000 Haitians have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to UNICEF.

Officials say 200,000 people have been without food and clean water, many for four days.

At least 20 people were found dead Sunday in Cabaret, 13 of them children, when a torrent of muddy water raged through the village, the region’s parliamentarian said.

“What has happened here is unimaginable,” deputy Pierre-Gerome Valcine told AFP from Cabaret, 35 km north of the capital Port-Au-Prince.

“Many homes were destroyed in Cabaret, and we have seen some bodies of children in the water,” added a journalist for UN radio who spent the night on the roof of his house.

Massive flooding over the past week in the poorest country in the Americas has triggered a humanitarian crisis that is worsening by the day — and has prompted prayers from Pope Benedict XVI.

“I want to remember the dear population of Haiti, greatly distressed in recent days by passing hurricanes,” Benedict told pilgrims on the Italian island of Sardinia today.

Continuing stormy weather hampered relief efforts today, when heavy rains led to the collapse of a key bridge which severed the only viable land route to Gonaives.

The bridge gave way overnight at the town of Mirebalais in central Haiti, forcing three trucks loaded with emergency supplies and bound for Saint-Marc, where thousands of desperate flood refugees from Gonaives were crowding into shelters, to turn back, according to a World Food Program official.

Many bridges in other areas of Haiti have also collapsed, homes have been washed away and crops ravaged.

Meanwhile, more than 600,000 people in Cuba began evacuations today ahead of the Ike’s arrival, including 9,210 foreign tourists who were moved out of Varadero, a tourism mecca about 120 km east of Havana.

Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado, meeting with authorities in Holguin, urged people to “carry out the evacuation in an orderly and speedy fashion” and to take steps to “avoid the loss of life”.

Ike is expected to eventually careen past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and sweep toward Louisiana and the storm-battered city of New Orleans as early as Tuesday.