Posted on 09/12/2008 11:29:13 PM PDT by 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
Houston/Galveston Long Range Radar
Corpus Christi Long Range Radar
Brownsville Long Range Radar
Lake Charles Long Range Radar
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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 |
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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)
Perhaps some looters would do? :D
It will take data-mining of commerce records to derive who didn’t make it.
Bank accounts, social security checks, land/cell phone accounts, FEMA aid requests, cable service: the people whose activity goes dark can be identified.
Survivors will be moving services somewhere else.
If you know his zip code, you might
get some information at these links:
http://media.myfoxhouston.com/news/ikezipcodereports/index.html
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http://www.centerpointenergy.com/staticfiles/ike/ike.html
Very good luck on your search.
Chances are very high that he
has no power yet. Prayers for
him.
of course there are the ILLEGALS that we have no record of...
Cute Big Kitty...!
I hope it stays in the church.
There are GPS records of everybody on both islands that were very active right up until Ike struck.
GPS cell phone records. If you were any of the large telecoms, you could query your customer database for those sending signal from the coord box of the predicted landfall.
Then look at those records after landfall, and those that have no activity 4 or 5 days later are likely never going to again.
Looks like Tim Miller of Texas Equusearch is all over this. People are calling him asking him to look for relatives...so he is preparing...
Tonight I was paddling to the post office and I saw a rabbit sitting in the top of an evergreen shrub that was surronded by water. Not something you see everyday. He looked at me and just kept on muching. Darndest thing. House was under about 3 feet of water.
On my way back with the canoe tonight with the mail, my neighbor Buster (who is also waterlocked) asked if I could give him a lift. Short story short. We ended up upside down - everything soaked, including my Nikon DSLR. Buster is a guide and knows more about canoing than Lewis and Clark. Needless to say, it was my fault. God seems pretty insistant on humbling me these days. If that is the worst that happened out of this, oh well. Everything will dry out. Am spending the night at the store as there are looters around. Glock is loaded.
I was so happy to see jpsb post today. Wonder if he is going to put lipstick on my picture - would be worth it:)
Thanks for all the prayers. Everything that is wet here will dry out. No danger of loss of life. As long as they stay away from my canoe, that is.
God Bless,
Arkady_Renko
You know, you might be taking all this too seriously.
Maybe need to get out some, go for a walk.
Seems to be a nice beach about ten miles ENE of Smith Point.
Say...starting from due south of the west end of Robinson Lake?
I think an easy three miler would cover just what you need.
While you’re there, get a feel for how the Robinson Gas Plant weathered the storm.
;-)
Now that is a cool flood story.
Take your oilskin boots, that area looks pretty......slick.
How did you make out, txflake? Weren’t you somewhere near Ike?
Oh, no. I’m west of Austin out in the hills at the lake.
Just have lots of family and business and freepers in the Ike zone.
And many memories of driving down from Houston, taking the Bolivar Ferry for the sheer joy of it. And abundant extended-family blue-crab netting at Pt. Bolivar. And getting megastung by jellies at Crystal Beach.
Did you see where your prophetic post to jpsb was re-posted?
You took that seriously?
I’m hoping the second part of that post doesn’t come true. When I look at the peninsula scrubbed bare I only hope all those people escaped. I just seem to keep coming back to this thread because it seems the true story of Ike’s toll may not have been told yet.
Tim Miller of Equusearch is moving into the Bolivar P tomorrow...I believe others outside of FEMA or anyone connected to the county/city/state needs to also search...helps to avoid many things.
His outfit is the one called to find N. Holloway.
He uses statistics to build his search practices.
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