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)

[DrewsMum]

Oh ok. I want to find one closer to Houston where the kids at our school can go help . We try so hard to push community service and this is a good chance.

[af_vet_rr]

While I initially thought the Galveston mayor did a few things right, overall you are correct, she is a nut job and covering her butt and it turns out, she shouldn't even be in charge:

Galveston Daily News

Who's in charge?

By Dolph Tillotson
The Daily News


Published September 17, 2008 A part of the current problems with recovery from the ravages of Hurricane Ike is that the city of Galveston’s part-time, unpaid mayor has virtually all the power in the city.

The person who runs the city every other day, the city manager, is secondary.

That’s backwards, and it gets in the way of effective government in the face of a dangerous community crisis.

The person in charge in an emergency should be the person who has hiring and firing authority over city department heads. That person is Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc, and Galveston would be better off with LeBlanc clearly established as the man in charge and serving as spokesman for the city.

The position of mayor of Galveston is a part-time, unpaid position. Ordinarily, that person has little or no direct authority over any city department. He or she may not be familiar with the inner workings of any department, and that person is not the executive to whom most city employees turn for leadership on a daily basis.

As of Wednesday’s stormy city council meeting, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas narrowly retained emergency powers in Galveston. There was a squabble over the emergency powers issue, and to prevent a vote, one member of the council walked out of the meeting so a quorum would no longer be present. Without a vote, Mayor Thomas remains in charge. It’s unclear why her emergency powers didn’t just expire without renewal by the city council.

That means she makes decisions in the place of city council and, for better or worse, Mayor Thomas is running the city in this emergency.

She has done a number of things well, but she has made some significant mistakes.

Tuesday’s abortive look-and-leave experiment was a disaster, hastily conceived and poorly executed. It was the result of Mayor Thomas’s reaction to outside pressures to let people return home to see their property. Instead of amending the strategy when glitches became obvious, the policy was suddenly rescinded, causing more concern, even anger, among evacuees desperate for information.

Mayor Thomas’s news blackout, announced Monday, seems to have made public anxiety worse, not better. A public relations policy that silences all voices except for Mayor Thomas’s robs readers of the fullest possible picture of what’s going on. That’s not good.

Worried citizens far away do not seem pleased. Judging from hundreds of emails and phone calls, that concern is turning quickly to fury among some.

For now, it would help everything if the mayor and council would, by agreement, allow the mayor’s emergency powers to end and defer to the city manager on key issues of governance.

Galveston needs clear, unquestioned leadership from an executive who knows in detail how the city works and who has hiring-and-firing authority over the employees who must execute policy in the field.

Galveston is experiencing a leadership crisis today, and the city manager, Steve LeBlanc, should be in the lead until the crisis is past.

[Otta B Sleepin]

You oughta try to register her, if the illegals and dead can vote....I hear you don’t even need I.D

That only applies to those registering as Democrats.

[DrewsMum]

Assuming you are male, I will take a “you were right” from a man any day of the week.. ;0)

Nah, really, I have no problem with someone giving folks the benefit of the doubt. And I did not see ALL of her press conferences but I just knew she reminded me of Nagin way too much...

It is certainly sad though that the Galveston people are having to be yanked to and fro by her incompetency.

Why do they even have a Mayor? If she is part time and unpaid and the city manager is main man anyways, I just wonder what’s the point.

Kudos to her for serving in the public sector on a voluntary basis but when you’re more of a hinderance than a help it’s time to turn over the reins to someone else. I mean, I could go volunteer at the hospital as a brain surgeon, but really no one wants that...

I didn’t respond to you before cause I knew I could be wrong in my assessment...and I was on a cell phone most of the time and a lengthy explanation was kind of difficult.

Have a good day...

[DrewsMum]

“That only applies to those registering as Democrats.”

Ahhhh, that is correct.

[RikaStrom]

“That only applies to those registering as Democrats.”

Now don'tcha'll be disparraging Psycho Dog that way. She is a good republican. :-)

Spoke to a contractor, looks like I need a new roof. The shingles are off all over the place, not just onesy/twosy.

Joy.

[texgal]

Thanks for the information. Not good news for my area code as it will be sometime after 09/22 before we can expect it.

[af_vet_rr]

Yes I am :-)

To take it even further, one of the council members, who is the former Galveston Fire Chief (he was an area firefighter for over 25 years), got into it with her yesterday: KHOU video. He told her straight up that they didn't know what they were doing, that they weren't making wise decisions (or taking too long to make simple decisions), and that some of their/her actions seemed to be more about the media attention than anything else.

[DrewsMum]

I just looked at that video and it is confusing. (to me) Why did the guy walk out and prevent a vote if he didn’t want the mayor in charge? I don’t understand.

They are having a press conf now

[NautiNurse]

New roof—I highly recommend a white reflective metal roof. Very strong, very durable (40 years), and will decrease a/c usage at least 20% in the hot summer months. On top of that, it looks good too.

[NautiNurse]

Here's another interesting debris field transition. Note the almost perfect squares in the upper right. Also, on the far left of the images there appear to be vehicles parked both before and after the storm.

[DrewsMum]

There are 5 POD locations within 10 minutes from my house. Why??? Several restaurants, grocery stores, fast food places are open!!! We got milk from target yesterday!

Hubby just made a good point. He said just give it a week or 2 and see if you don’t find some of those MRE’s and supplies for sale at the local “flea markets”...

[stlnative]

Authorities have reported a total of 53 deaths in 11 states as Ike moved from Texas northeastward across the U.S.:

Texas - nineteen, including at least five in Harris County from carbon monoxide poisoning and a utility worker crushed by a tree while clearing downed lines north of Houston.

Louisiana - six, including two contractors who were electrocuted.

Tennessee - two, both golfers killed by a falling tree.

Arkansas - one, a man killed by a tree falling on a mobile home.

Ohio - six, including five by falling trees and one person electrocuted while working on a generator.

Indiana - seven, including a father and son killed helping children escape from a ditch.

Illinois - two, including an elderly man found in a flooded backyard.

Missouri - four, including a woman struck by a tree limb and an elderly man suspected of drowning in a flooded yard.

Kentucky - two, a 10-year-old boy struck by a tree limb while mowing a lawn and a woman exposed to carbon monoxide fumes from a generator at her home.

Pennsylvania - two, a 46-year-old man struck by tree limb while helping remove a large tree from a house, and a 43-year-old utility worker who was electrocuted when he stepped on a live wire while working to repair power lines.

Michigan - two, a 1-year-old boy apparently drowned in a stormwater-filled ditch near Auburn, Mich., and a 15-year-old killed when his all-terrain vehicle crashed into a hidden ravine created by storm water.

[stlnative]

Mayor: ‘Galveston is not in ruins’

01:13 PM CDT on Thursday, September 18, 2008

http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/khou080918_mh_galveston_update.8b4e4cbf.html

[af_vet_rr]

I just looked at that video and it is confusing. (to me) Why did the guy walk out and prevent a vote if he didn’t want the mayor in charge? I don’t understand.

I think she was going to keep her power - yesterday morning, before the meeting, one of the reporters covering it expected the mayor to keep her powers. It sounded like the others were siding with the mayor so she would have kept the power.

[Enosh]

Mayor: 'Galveston is not in ruins'

*snip*

He expects to have power restored to the “core of the city” behind the seawall in seven to 10 days.

The West End will take much longer because the damage is “very severe,” according to LeBlanc.

Water is also partially restored, but the island is consuming and leaking more water than it's receiving.

*snip*

[stlnative]

3 more deaths reported from Ike

Galveston County Medical Examiner Stephen Pustilnik said Thursday that three more deaths were attributed to Hurricane Ike, bringing the state total to 22. Nationwide, 56 people have died.

~SNIP~ More at link

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_10499180

[stlnative]

General Info:

Large parts of Galvestion County have not been searched and debris fields still need to be sifted through.

[stlnative]

About 80 helped at Conroe-area complex
Sept. 18, 2008, 1:40PM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6009358.html

---

Former Tylerites Braved the Storm in Galveston, Houston

The following is a first-hand account of the destruction of Galveston Island by Hurricane Ike by Mark Collette, former Tyler Paper reporter, who lives there with his wife, Rhiannon Meyers, also a former Tyler Paper reporter and now a reporter for the Galveston County Daily News.

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20080915/NEWS01/809150284

[Enosh]

Galveston May Open In 1 Week

"The West End is a longer story," LeBlanc said. "The damage on the West End was very severe and I don't have a time frame to tell you."