Hurricane Ike Live Thread IV

NOAA/NHC ^ | 14 September 2008 | NOAA/NHC

[NautiNurse]

The eyewall of Hurricane Ike crossed Galveston Island in the early hours of Saturday morning. Reports indicate as many as 20,000 residents of Galveston Island chose not to evacuate as storm surge engulfed the island. The Freeport Chief of Police reported as many as 2000 residents did not evacuate as flood waters swamped coastal communities. There are widespread reports of power outages and coastal flooding throughout the Texas/Louisiana region. The U.S. Coast Guard received hundreds of calls Friday afternoon to rescue people stranded by flood waters along the barrier islands and Galveston Bay communities.

Multiple fires broke out in the Greater Houston area fueled by strong winds. Fire fighting efforts were hampered by flood waters. Brennan's Restaurant, a landmark in Houston, burned to the ground. A 584-foot freighter crippled in the Gulf of Mexico and its crew of 22 survived the storm after The U.S. Coast Guard was forced to abort rescue efforts Friday afternoon due to foul weather

Gulf Coast wholesale gasoline prices jumped to nearly $5 a gallon over fears that water and wind damage could keep the facilities closed for days or longer. Oil companies had shut down 97.5 percent of production in the Gulf of Mexico by Friday morning and were battening down refineries and petrochemical plants in an area that accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity.

Exxon Mobil reported evacuating workers from its Gulf Coast offshore platforms and onshore facilities in the anticipated path of Ike, shutting down daily production of about 36,000 barrels of oil and 270 million cubic feet of gas..

Public Advisory Updated every 3 hours

Discussion Updated every 6 hours

Buoy data: Western Gulf of Mexico

Forecast Models

Houston/Galveston Long Range Radar
Corpus Christi Long Range Radar
Brownsville Long Range Radar
Lake Charles Long Range Radar

Ike
Single Image		Image Loop
Lat/Lon	No Lat/Lon	Short	Long
Visible	Visible	Visible	Visible
Shortwave	Shortwave	Shortwave	Shortwave
Water Vapor	Water Vapor	Water Vapor	Water Vapor
Infrared Channel 4 Enhancements
None	None	None	None
AVN	AVN	AVN	AVN
Dvorak	Dvorak	Dvorak	Dvorak
JSL	JSL	JSL	JSL
RGB	RGB	RGB	RGB
Funktop	Funktop	Funktop	Funktop
Rainbow	Rainbow	Rainbow	Rainbow

Additional Resources:

Navy Tropical Cyclone
Storm Pulse Very cool site

KHOU Houston
ABC 13 News Houston
FOX News Houston

KPLC Lake Charles
KFDM 6 Beaumont/Port Arthur
KKBMT 12 Beaumont
KRIS-TV Corpus Christi
KZTV Corpus Christi

Brazoria County Emergency Management
Galveston County Emergency Management
Chambers Country Emergency Management
Liberty County Emergency Management

Category	Wind Speed	Barometric Pressure	Storm Surge	Damage Potential
Tropical Depression	< 39 mph < 34 kts			Minimal
Tropical Storm	39 - 73 mph 34 - 63 kts			Minimal
Hurricane 1 (Weak)	74 - 95 mph 64 - 82 kts	28.94" or more 980.02 mb or more	4.0' - 5.0' 1.2 m - 1.5 m	Minimal damage to vegetation
Hurricane 2 (Moderate)	96 - 110 mph 83 - 95 kts	28.50" - 28.93" 965.12 mb - 979.68 mb	6.0' - 8.0' 1.8 m - 2.4 m	Moderate damage to houses
Hurricane 3 (Strong)	111 - 130 mph 96 - 112 kts	27.91" - 28.49" 945.14 mb - 964.78 mb	9.0' - 12.0' 2.7 m - 3.7 m	Extensive damage to small buildings
Hurricane 4 (Very strong)	131 - 155 mph 113 - 135 kts	27.17" - 27.90" 920.08 mb - 944.80 mb	13.0' - 18.0' 3.9 m - 5.5 m	Extreme structural damage
Hurricane 5 (Devastating)	Greater than 155 mph Greater than 135 kts	Less than 27.17" Less than 920.08 mb	Greater than 18.0' Greater than 5.5m	Catastrophic building failures possible

Previous Threads:
Hurricane Ike Live Thread III
Hurricane Ike Live Thread II
Hurricane Ike Live Thread I
TS Hanna, Hurricane Ike & TS Josephine [Other than that, the tropics are calm]
Tropical Storms Hanna, Ike and Josephine, TD Gustav (Other than that, the tropics are calm)

[pax_et_bonum]

Engaged to an extremely nice, good, CONSERVATIVE man!!!!!

He’s so good to me I don’t know what to think!

Gotta run an errand but I’ll be back later.

Keep up your good work on this thread! It’s been fun reading your posts!

[mylife]

Youre a pip L0L!

Lemme know if I can help

[Enosh]

KHOU did a flyover of the West End. It’s there! (mostly)

The GOM took a step forward and the first row of houses appears to be gone.

[STARWISE]

Westchase Cams

Highway

http://www.westchase.dst.tx.us/webcam2.htm

http://www.westchase.dst.tx.us/webcam3.htm

***

User video - Westchase - yesterday, 9am

http://uservideo.weather.com/video/Westchase-Houston-9am-Saturday

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Probably. I'd like to caution people again about reports in the press. Remember the often reported horror stories from the New Orleans Superdome during Katrina which turned out to be total BS.

The MSM is continuing their full court press to stop President Bush, I mean Senator McCain from winning in November. The media is going to try to attribute any problems in the relief effort to them.

[STARWISE]

Private user video: Galveston Island, yesterday
morning, in the aftermath

and the brave firefighters — horrible fire)

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh4hWUzq6A4

**Posting is horrible here now for me. At
an absolute crawl. Am I alone?

[mylife]

FR is FRunky

[LA Woman3]

IKE Update

Gov. Rick Perry today surveyed Hurricane Ike storm damage from the air before visiting Galveston Island and Ellington Airfield to visit with local emergency management officials.

“It’s difficult to see parts of our state in this condition, but it is the current reality and we’re working through a recovery operation that is massive in scale and complexity,” said Gov. Perry. “People in the area need to understand that our team is working ‘round the clock to restore services while people outside the area need to stay away until we have reached an acceptable level of safety.”

Gov. Perry was accompanied by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Steve McCraw, Texas Director of Homeland Security. Bad weather in southeast Texas prevented the governor from visiting that area of the state today.

The top priority of the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management remains search and rescue, with nearly 2,000 storm victims rescued in the course of nearly 500 missions. Restoration of utility services is being aggressively pursued at the same time.

Below is the latest update regarding Hurricane Ike damage assessments and recovery efforts:

As of 10:00 a.m. Sunday, 254 shelters were open throughout the state housing more than 37,000 evacuees. The number of evacuees utilizing shelter services fluctuates between day and night with more evacuees requiring assistance during the night.

Fifteen points of distribution (POD), staffed by Texas Military Forces, are expected to be open by midnight Sunday. FEMA is setting up PODs throughout the Houston area and the state will operate PODs set up in east Harris County.

At daybreak, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) estimated that more than 2.4 million customers were without power.

Search and rescue (SAR) efforts are ongoing. To date, 470 missions have been run and more than 500 structures have been checked for victims in need. More than 1,900 storm victims have been rescued (an estimated 394 victims via air and 1554 victims via ground and water), and more than 600 victims have been assisted without need for evacuation. A breakdown of SAR efforts via region is below:

Galveston: 550 assists

Beaumont: 521 medical evacuees

Orange: 477 evacuated 525 assisted 300 homes checked 220 rescued by boat 292 rescued at special needs facility 250 structures with light damage

Bolivar Peninsula: 125 rescues (ground and air)

16 buses are stationed in Orange to assist with continued evacuations. 9 busloads were evacuated from Orange Saturday night.

100 buses were staged in Texas City and sent into Galveston Sunday morning. SAR officials plan to evacuate up to 10,500 residents from Galveston. 4,000 evacuees are scheduled to be sent to shelters in Austin.

For more information, visit the Hurricane Center on the governor’s newly-redesigned Web site, http://www.governor.state.tx.us.

[AFPhys]

FR is almost gone right now. It isn’t you ... feels like a DOS attack to me.

I am embarrassed that I didn’t think of the following source earlier - it makes me feel a bit of a fool about all the effort I put in earlier today...

I just thought of going to DOE to get figures for power outages. Here is a starting link:
http://www.oe.energy.gov/news_room_and_events/events.htm

From there I eventually discovered this report of today’s situation:
Situation Report for September 14, 2008, 10AM
http://www.oe.netl.doe.gov/docs/2008_SitRep_2_Ike_091408_12PM.pdf

My summary is:
2.8 Million “customers” (not people) are dark now. 90% in Texas, others in LA and AR
Many Oil facilities shut down, but no reports of substantial damage.
Natural gas pipelines seem to be OK. No infrastructure damage reported. Much is already being brought back on line.
83% of Offshore platforms, etc., evacuated. No assessment of damage until Tuesday.

IF you look at that report, I caution you that the 90%+ of oil facilities out is meaningless as far as anything having to do with damage. That simply means certain facilities are not producing as of this report.

[AFPhys]

FR is almost gone right now. It isn’t you ... feels like a DOS attack to me.

I am embarrassed that I didn’t think of the following source earlier - it makes me feel a bit of a fool about all the effort I put in earlier today...

I just thought of going to DOE to get figures for power outages. Here is a starting link:
http://www.oe.energy.gov/news_room_and_events/events.htm

From there I eventually discovered this report of today’s situation:
Situation Report for September 14, 2008, 10AM
http://www.oe.netl.doe.gov/docs/2008_SitRep_2_Ike_091408_12PM.pdf

My summary is:
2.8 Million “customers” (not people) are dark now. 90% in Texas, others in LA and AR
Many Oil facilities shut down, but no reports of substantial damage.
Natural gas pipelines seem to be OK. No infrastructure damage reported. Much is already being brought back on line.
83% of Offshore platforms, etc., evacuated. No assessment of damage until Tuesday.

IF you look at that report, I caution you that the 90%+ of oil facilities out is meaningless as far as anything having to do with damage. That simply means certain facilities are not producing as of this report.

[lainie]

Ike Underscores Foolishness of Building on Barrier Islands

Aside from it being callous to "pile on" while the barrier island folks were facing a major hurricane, I am also a little surprised to see that LiveScience is now a bonafide news source for Yahoo.

[lainie]

Ike Underscores Foolishness of Building on Barrier Islands

Aside from it being callous to "pile on" while the barrier island folks were facing a major hurricane, I am also a little surprised to see that LiveScience is now a bonafide news source for Yahoo.

[patton]

LOL - got it.

[STARWISE]

And the financial news is scary .. tomorrow could be very very tough, coupled with the blow to some of our vital energy resources.

Prayers continue for those hurt so badly by Ike.

I’ve been to our Yahoo Groups FReerepublic2 backup room,

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freerepublic2/messages

and I’ve posted on freedominion.com, where they’ve been nice enough to set up a FReeper guest room.

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=14&sid=5882fbfccdc4028c97018a5a3828615d

So, at least we have some backup sites in the absence of
FR ... I got here via:

http://beta.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index?tab=comments, per a poster at the Yahoo Groups site.

Hope it gets FIXED soon!

[stlnative]

Major flash flooding in St. Louis County MO (Florissant/Hazelwood) due to IKE.
At least 3 dead in St. Louis County

Water rushed in to homes quickly. Many homes and businesses flooded with about 5 foot of water.
Several hundred autos ruined in just one Apartment complex alone.

[stlnative]

I’m in on the beta version.

You would not believe the damage from IKE today in St. Louis County. I’ll see if I can find some picture links.

3 killed in St. Louis County due flash flooding from Ike.

[lainie]

KHOU earlier showed an animal shelter with something like 40 squirrels in it. They said concerned residents noticed that the rodentia didn’t have a home anymore and brought them to the shelter.

I’m having a hard time reconciling independent gun-toting Texans with rescuing wild park animals (vermin) that can make their own way to higher ground.

[lainie]

I forgot about the other check-in places. What was the problem?

[STARWISE]

The regular FR site is down. Been down for hours.

I never about this alternate site ... glad I found it.

[Amelia]

I couldn’t remember where the alternate sites were either...haven’t had to use them in a long time.