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
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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)
Just one more little problem. How ironic it would be to survive Ike and the heat and the snakes only to come out of your house one morning and be face to face with the king of the jungle.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake
I’ve been without cable (not surprising that there’s a delayed reaction — again), so now that it’s back on, I’m trying to play catch-up as fast as I can.
Did anyone recall seeing recent pictures of a restaurant called Fish Tales at 2502 Seawall in Galveston? I know a group of people who met at Fish Tales regularly, so I went down there once in July 2007 with my daughter and a family friend who was familiar with the area. We came into Galveston via the Interstate and left town via the ferry route, so I’m really glad that I had one opportunity to see the city of Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula before Ike. We had spent a really pleasant day in Galveston and planned to go back again in May 2008, but we had a family emergency and went to Florida instead and didn’t get a chance to return. Someday, in what I imagine will be a very distant future, if there’s anything left of Fish Tales, I’ll bet those regulars would return again given the opportunity. I wonder what happened to the place?
I dunno. I don’t think Galveston got wiped. A lot got flooded and major repair will have to take place, but the seawall protected it (again.) The Bolivar Peninsula (where you got off the ferry and drove through) got wiped.
I just realized, actually probably knew it in the past and forgot, but I just realized why beach property has that sort of rustic, weatherbeaten look to it. There’s really no point in spending a lot of money to pretty up something that might be wiped off the map at any time. Not that the rest of our homes can’t either, but the beach property is particularly vulnerable.
“I include the National Guard in that [volunteers].”
I hope Texas has not been having the problem that occurred in Katrina that a lot of the National Guard was busy with Iraq and couldn’t help out then.
I think we actually need two types of Guard. The National Guard with the current obligations and benefits and a Home Guard with lesser benefits that can only be used for emergencies in the 50 states and territories. I think there would be additional volunteers for a Home Guard, knowing they could not be sent out of country.
laugh ping and Comment 3329
Wasn’t there a Home Guard during the time of the Civil War?
Maybe you can find it for her as I have to leave soon for a doctors appt...
NOAA does not seem to have a damage shot of the area she wants.
Here is the location... (zoom in or out)
She wants S Jacks Rd which is one block west of O Neil Rd and one block east of S Tinkle Rd (this is closer to the end of the island and west of Crystal Beach)
The “A” marker is not right on the area
Street map... it is between the words Bolivar Peninsula & Crystal Beach on this street map and is on gulf side of route 87.
http://www.bolivarchamber.org/portals/0/BolivarPeninsulaLeft.pdf
here is the NOAA link again (BTW they have added more zoom images of the east coast) but not of the area beachprincess is looking for
http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/IKE0000.HTM
I don’t know what the answer is but when you have people in elected offices running the show, egos are going to clash.. Overall, excluding the look and leave program, it sounds like things are going ok..problems fixed as they come up...that’s about all rescuers can do.
If there was a Home Guard in the Civil War, I would like to know about it so I can forward the information to the Congress Critters that I hope to contact about this idea. Please tell me if you have the answer and call your own Congress Critter if you like the idea. Phone CA4-3121 and ask the operator to connect you with right office. If you don’t know who your representative or senator is, ask the operator. They can look it up and then transfer you.
http://www.oe.energy.gov/news_room_and_events/events.htm
From there I eventually get to this report of today’s situation:
Situation Report for September 17, 2008, 10AM
http://www.oe.netl.doe.gov/docs/2008_SitRep_7_Ike_091708_10AM.pdf
My approximate summary (& diff from y’day) is:
- 1.9 (-.3M) Million “customers” (not people) are dark now in TX, 0.8M (-.2M)in OH, 0.3M (-.2M) LA & AR & KY
- Oil/gas starting to come back online slowly, but much is still off line. About 60% of the platforms operating in the area remain evacuated.
- It appears that about 30 of the 3,800 offshore production platforms were destroyed.
- Natural gas pipelines seem to be OK. No major infrastructure damage reported. Slowly coming back up. Need for electric. Some repairs. Not much difference there, it seems.
- A little under 90% of gas/oil wells in the GOM are not producing due to preemptive shutdowns- slowly recovering.
- Nat Gas Damage assessments under way. Flooding. Lack of power. Some may take several weeks to cleanup & repair.
- Minor damage to some off-shore facilities. Too early for detailed repair estimates, but probably not more than a few weeks.
The largest affected distribution company, CenterPoint, reports has gone from 3/4 down to about 2/3 of their customers dark. Facilities still out of service include 21 (was 90 y’day) transmission facilities, 936 (was 1348) distribution circuits. It sounds like they are doing a great job of getting this done, but of course the stuff remaining will be increasingly difficult. They haven’t changed their estimates of time it will take.
Someone specifically asked about Entergy yesterday. It is only about 1/4 the size of CenterPoint, and MUCH harder hit. Almost 85% of their customers are dark, and my glance indicates their facilities seem to be really devastated compared to CenterPoint’s. Though they are much smaller, they report having even more people working there. Still, they’re expecting about the same recovery time, and there is a list of areas and times in the report.
On balance, world wide investors are looking at Ike as a non-event for anything other than short-term production of Oil/Gas since prices are down substantially over the last couple days. Distribution situations will cause price action in local areas. In my area, gasoline is up only $0.04, so it’s been a nothing.
[IF you look at the pdf above, 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.]
[This is linked to the previous summary I made]
That never happened, and that assertion was simply another in a long list of lies put out by the MSM and the LA and nat'l Democrat politicians as part of their efforts to smear the Bush administration and deflect attention away from their own incompetence and unpreparedness.
While it is a "fact" that a lot of National Guard were busy in Iraq (and still are), the assertion that this caused a shortage of Guard personnel and resources for Katrina relief was a flat-out lie. The reason there were delays in getting Guard resources involved was that LA Gov. Kathleen Blanco refused to give her okay, as required by law, despite repeated urgings from President Bush.
In fairness, however, Bush bears the full blame for failing or refusing to publicly call her on it. For whatever reason, that failure of command and leadership on his part allowed her and the MSM to win the PR battle and convince the American public that Bush and his administration were primarily to blame for all the aid debacles of Katrina.
As subsequent history shows, the Katrina episode, and many other examples of his mind-boggling inability or refusal to recognize that there are certain enemies who must be confronted and defeated rather than placated and appeased, has cost him, and us, dearly.
I just came back from the doctor and went that way to see if there was something there and didn’t see a thing on Spencer and Red Bluff. Maybe it’s inside the Kroger?
Lots more things opening up but traffic is a nightmare.
http://www.click2houston.com/video/17492630/index.html
For anyone who’s interested- here’s a fascinating 30 minute walking tour of Galveston done by one of the local news reporters- shows the high water lines on the Strand, Post Office etc. (roughtly 7-8 ft)
The island behind the sewwall fared a great deal better than anywhere else.
Beach property takes a weather-beating from the wind coming off the gulf. It picks up sand and kind of sandblasts everything.
This should be printed out by authorities and given to anybody who chooses to remain during the next “mandatory evacuation”
Check your mail.....
I got blue roof info for you. freepmail me when you return. If you still need it. be safe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
