That's bad. What does one really say to that?

Be safe RodeoShro and other TX orgers!


If it becomes comparable to post-Katrina, take heart: I bet Bush will get shit together. Texas is his home state after all. (I mean that in the best possible way, seriously.)

...still waiting for an Ike and Tina joke.....

SirPsycho said:

lol


... and this is why I'm hestitant to move to Orlando... tornados and hurricanes

myfavorite said:

dont forget

alot of those folks went to houston

i travel to houston from time to time

they are totally displaced

luv4u said:

thank god the evac was so top notch this time


but galvaston will be gone i fear

i chickened out and fled to austin....

I've been looking at weather.com--and sending out prayers to all orgers affected! Check in when you can!

be safe everyone!!!!

ufoclub said:

good. can't have you blown to bits on your birthday



hope you are all safely hunkered down, affected orgers!!

I'm praying for everyone safety--but DOGGONE it if the gas prices didn't go up overnight!!!!! I paid $3.57 on Monday--my husband said he paid $4.65 this morning.

luv4u said:

Ike will be a tropical storm again by the time it reach Arkansas this Saturday Night. Sunday is going to suck!

lazycrockett said:

Cuba was Tina.

emm said:

No "chicken out" about it. I'm glad you played it safe.

We have friends near Orange, TX who have been told their town was at one point under 9ft of water.

for everyone affected by this storm.

morningsong said:

The police chief was just trying to impress upon them the seriousness of the situation, but yeah, what does one say to that?

Has anyone heard from RodeoShro or our other orgers that were evacuating? I'm worried about them...

Nothinbutjoy said:

Well I heard that ALOT of people ignored the warnings...then when the storm hit, 911 got over A THOUSAND calls for help.

WTF?!?!

So all these stubborn Texans decide to ignore the authorities, but then they expect for others to put their lives on the line to save their asses???



Listen...I'm fortunate that a big hurricane hasn't hit this area since the 1930's, but (being as how my house sits a mere 5-feet above sea level), the MINUTE they call for an evac I'm getting the F*CK outta here!!!

In the Southwest suburbs the damage here isn't too bad. Some damaged billboards and thats it.

However...our office near downtown is all sorts of messed up.

it didn't even rain here.

By air, boat and truck, search on for Ike victims



at 23:31 on September 13, 2008, EDT.
By Christopher Sherman And Pauline Arrillaga, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Residents access the damage to their homes and boats Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008 in El Lago, Texas. Thousands of homes and government buildings had flooded, roads were washed out, 2.9 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated as crews could not reach them. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Frank Franklin II


HOUSTON - Rescuers in boats, helicopters and high-water trucks fanned out along the flood-stricken Texas coast Saturday in a monumental effort to reach tens of thousands of people who stubbornly ignored warnings and tried to ride out hurricane Ike.

The storm roared ashore hours before daybreak with 177-kilometre-an-hour winds and towering waves, smashing houses, flooding thousands of homes, blowing out windows in Houston's skyscrapers and cutting off power to more than three million people, perhaps for weeks, though some had been restored by nightfall.

By evening, it appeared Ike was not the single calamitous stroke forecasters had feared. But the full extent of the damage - or even a rough sense of how many people may have perished - was still unclear, in part because many roads were impassable.

Some authorities feared this could instead become a slow-motion disaster, with thousands of victims trapped in their homes, waiting for days to be rescued.

"We will be doing this probably for the next week or more. We hope it doesn't turn into a recovery," said Sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Marlow in Orange County, where 600 to 700 people had to be rescued from flooded homes.

He said hundreds were probably still stranded.

By some estimates, more than 140,000 of the one million or so people who had been ordered to evacuate the coast as Ike drew near may have tried to tough it out. Many of them evidently realized the mistake too late and pleaded with authorities in vain to save them overnight.

Since Ike made landfall, there have been 940 rescues in Texas of people stranded in homes, vehicles and elsewhere, said Gov. Rick Perry's spokeswoman Allison Castle. In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal said nearly 600 people were plucked from Ike's floodwaters since Friday and search and rescue teams believe the largest number of rescues was behind them.

Downgraded to a tropical storm Saturday, Ike was about 80 kilometres southwest of Texarkana at 8 p.m. ET and expected to begin speeding to the northeast toward western Arkansas, taking the threat of tornadoes and heavy rains inland, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Maximum sustained winds dropped to near 65 km/h but stretched about 160 kilometres from Ike's core.

Ronnie Sharp, 65, and his terrier-mix Princess, had to be rescued from his trailer in Orange County when water reached his knees.

"I was getting too many snakes in the house, otherwise I would have stayed," Sharp said.

He said he lost everything in the flood, except his medicine and some cigarettes.

After the storm had passed, National Guardsmen, members of the coast guard, FEMA crews and state and local law-enforcement authorities mobilized for what Perry pronounced "the largest search-and-rescue operation in the history of the state of Texas."

Some emergency officials were angry and frustrated that so many people ignored the warnings.

"When you stay behind in the face of a warning, not only do you jeopardize yourself, you put the first responders at risk as well," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

"Now we're going to see this play out."

Steve LeBlanc, Galveston's city manager, said: "There was a mandatory evacuation and people didn't leave and that is very frustrating because now we are having to deal with everybody who did not heed the order."

Because Ike was so huge - some 800 kilometres across, making it nearly as big as Texas itself - hurricane winds pounded the coast for hours before and after the storm's centre came ashore. Ike soon weakened to a tropical storm as it made its way inland but continued to pound the state with 100-km/h winds and rain.

Officials were encouraged to learn the storm surge topped out at only 4.5 metres - far lower than the catastrophic 7.5-metre wall of water forecasters had feared.

Preliminary industry estimates indicate damage at $8 billion.

Damage to the United States' biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants appeared to be slight but gasoline prices shot up for fear the supply would be interrupted by power outages and the time necessary to restart a refinery. In some parts of the country, gas prices surged briefly to $5 a gallon.

As the day wore on, hundreds of people were rescued from their flooded-out homes, in many cases by emergency crews that had to make their way through high water and streets blocked by peeled-away roofs, wayward yachts and uprooted trees.

But the day was already half over before the winds died down enough for authorities to begin the rescue and the search was almost certain to be suspended before dark because of the dangers posed by downed power lines and flooded roads. A portion of hard-hit Galveston had yet to be examined.

The storm, which killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before reaching the United States, was blamed for at least four deaths, two each in Texas and Louisiana. A woman was killed in her sleep when a tree fell on her home near Pinehurst, Texas, in Montgomery County. A 19-year-old man slipped off a jetty near Corpus Christi and was apparently washed away. Terrebonne Parish coroner senior investigator Gary Alford says a 16-year-old boy drowned in his house in Bayou Dularge, La., when he fell through wooden pallets used as flooring and floodwaters rose. Alford also said a 57-year-old man died from a broken neck after he was blown over by wind.

Lisa Lee spent hours on the roof of her Bridge City home with her husband, John, her 16-year-old brother, William Robinson, and their two dogs. They dove into two-metre-deep floodwaters and swam to safety after a sheriff's deputy arrived in a truck and drove as close to their home as he could. Their dogs paddled to safety behind them.

"It was like a dream," said William Robinson, while his sister shivered in a blanket at a shelter at a Baptist church in Orange.

A convoy of search-and-rescue teams from Texas and California drove into Galveston - where the storm came ashore at 3:10 a.m. ET - after bulldozers cleared away mountains of debris. Interstate 45, the only road onto the island, was littered with large overturned yachts, dead pelicans and twisted debris from homes and docks.

Homes and other buildings in Galveston and homes burned unattended during the height of Ike's fury; 17 collapsed because crews couldn't get to them to douse the flames. There was no water or electricity on the island and the main hospital, the University of Texas Medical Branch, flew critically ill patients to other medical centre.

Sedonia Owen, 75, and her son, Lindy McKissick, stayed to shoo off looters. She was armed with a shotgun, watching floodwaters recede from her front porch.

"My neighbours told me: 'You've got my permission. Anybody who goes into my house, you can shoot them,"' Owen said.

President George W. Bush declared a major disaster in his home state Texas and ordered immediate federal aid.

In downtown Houston, shattered glass rained down on the streets below the JPMorgan Chase Tower, the state's tallest building at 75 storeys. Trees were uprooted in the streets, road signs mangled by wind.

"I think we're like at ground zero," said Mauricio Diaz, 36, as he walked along Texas Avenue across the street from the Chase building.

Metal blinds from the tower dotted the street, along with red seat cushions, pieces of a wood desk and office documents marked "highly confidential."

Southwestern Louisiana was spared a direct hit but Ike's surge of water penetrated some 50 kilometres inland, flooding thousands of homes, breaching levees and soaking areas still recovering from Labour Day's hurricane Gustav. Officials said the flooding was worse than it was during 2005's hurricane Rita, which hit the Louisiana-Texas line.

But there was good news: A stranded freighter with 22 men aboard made it through the storm safely and a tugboat was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County gave birth to a girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades. She named the baby Katrina.

In Surfside Beach, retired carpenter and former marine Ray Wilkinson became something of a celebrity for a day: he was the lone resident in the town of 805 to defy the order to leave. Authorities found him Saturday morning, drunk.

"I consider myself to be stupid," Wilkinson, 67, said through a thick, tobacco-stained beard.

"I'm just tired of running from these things. If it's going to get you, it's going to get you."

He added: "I didn't say I had all my marbles, OK?"


©The Canadian Press, 2008

It's still relatively early on Sunday, but Texas peeps do try to check in and let us know how you are as soon as you can. You have an online family here that wants to be you're all okay

Rodeoshroe and Miranda please check in.

There's a large power outage so org folks are most likely okay just temporarily disconnected trying to recoup and reorganize. Could be sitting in a long lines at the gas stations and stuff.

I hear people are waiting in line for gas and ice.

The gas issue is suppose to affect all of us here in the US a little. But I think the long lines are due to the power outages, not many pumps in working order. And it's hot and muggy there, not much air conditioning available.

the storm was sorta bad. we had downed fences. no electricity and flooded streets! ! ! ! ! ! !


We're all safe and accounted for tho.....

Well, Ike visited Detroit today. Of course, he was a shadow of his former self, but it was very windy and rainy this afternoon--lots of flooded streets.

Rodeo, SCNDLS and all other TX orgers.... hoping all is well with you, your homes, and your families.