By DPA,
Houston : Post-hurricane rescue efforts focused Sunday on Galveston on the Texas coast after Hurricane Ike roared inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
Residents of the hard-hit coast and Houston, where four million people live 60 km inland, were surveying the damage from the storm. Ike made landfall with winds topping 170 km an hour and a huge storm surge that pushed water up to two metres deep into the streets of Galveston and parts of Houston.
The diameter of the storm, which at its peak covered much of the upper Gulf of Mexico, was blamed for the unusually high and far-reaching surge of seawater, which affected coastal communities as far off as Louisiana and Mississippi.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that in Galveston and the Houston ship channel, the surge was “not quite as bad as worst-case scenario” but still reached nearly five metres in some locations. Powerful winds pushed waves even higher, reportedly topping Galveston’s six-metre-high seawall.
Downgraded Saturday to a tropical storm, Ike was moving overnight Saturday out of Texas and into Arkansas on a north-eastward path expected to take it into the Midwest, dropping 12 to 18 centimetres of rain. The storm was expected to weaken to tropical depression strength by Sunday morning.
At least three US deaths had been reported by late Saturday. Last week, Ike was blamed for at least 72 deaths in Haiti and seven lives lost in Cuba as it churned through the Caribbean.
An estimated 90,000 people refused mandatory orders to evacuate Galveston, which sits on a barrier island, despite exceptionally strongly worded warnings from the US National Weather Service, which predicted “certain death” for occupants of especially vulnerable houses in Galveston.
Before Ike made landfall, an estimated 2.2 million Texans evacuated their homes.
US President George W. Bush was scheduled to receive a briefing on storm relief efforts Sunday morning at the White House in Washington. On Saturday, he issued additional disaster assistance to local governments in 29 Texas counties and declared a major disaster from Ike in parts of neighbouring Louisiana, which is still recovering from Hurricane Gustav on September 2.
In Houston, millions of people were likely to remain without power for days. Across the hurricane-hit region, people were urged to drink bottled water until their local authorities confirmed that municipal water was potable.
Ike left thousands of windows broken in Houston’s glittering skyscrapers and other widespread wind damage and flooding.
Thousands of Army and Air Force National Guard troops, along with outlying fire and rescue crews, were hustling into the hardest hit areas to search for survivors and aid in relief efforts. Chertoff said that more than 50 aircraft were in use to spot people in distress.
“Our first priority right now is lifesaving efforts,” Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison said. “We’re working very hard to do the search and rescue operations. They are underway, and there’s a lot being done by all the different agencies. We have a large combination of state and federal responses out there right now.”
In 1900, up to 8,000 people died in Galveston during and after a hurricane, which remains the deadliest natural disaster in US history.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,800 people in New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf coast.