Everyone is pulling together. Houston went through the great flood of 2001 with Tropical Storm Allison that dumped 25+ inches of rain, in 24 hours, on some areas of Houston; destroyed/seriously damaged over 10,000 homes (many had to be razed due to mold); killed 22 people; flooded out 1/3 of the Texas Medical Center (largest in the world); flooded out the basements of many large downtown buildings which shorted out their entire electrical systems (included the building where my brother’s law firm is located; and did over $5 billion in damages. They didn’t have massive county-wide power outages with Allison, like Ike, but it was very bad.
Bolivar peninsula, Galveston island, and Clear Lake/Galveston Bay are the areas that really took a serious beating from Ike. Central Houston proper is in fairly good shape. The historical area of downtown Galveston has massive flood damage, along with homes outside the seawall. I’m still amazed at the devastation to Bolivar peninsula. There is one stretch where not only are 5 blocks of homes gone so is all the land. The area is part of the ocean now.
I/we went through this mess with Hurricane Wilma in 2005 which did more damage to Key Biscayne island than Hurricane Andrew did in 1992. And, Wilma caused the largest power outage in Miami-Dade’s history breaking over 11,000 utility poles that had to be replaced. I’ve lived in a hurricane zone my entire life. Guess that proves I must have a screw loose and love paying massive home insurance premiums, *lol*.
Sunday, Oct 5, 2008 Update – Various news sources
Discovery of 2 bodies raises region’s death toll to 35, 70 National from Hurricane Ike
Officials still looking for those lost in the storm. Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Ike pummeled the Texas coast, more than 400 people are still listed as missing.
Texas Task Force One crew members scouring debris piles in Galveston County found two bodies on Goat Island, [bay side of Crystal Beach, Bolivar Peninsula] said Galveston County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo. That raises the hurricane’s Houston-area death toll to 35. A Texas sheriff’s official says the national death toll from Hurricane Ike is now 70.
Hundreds of people are still missing three weeks after Ike’s assault on Texas. This past week, cadaver dogs pinpointed five spots on Crystal Beach where bodies could be trapped under rubble. “There are definitely going to be people from Hurricane Ike that are never found,” said Galveston County emergency management spokesman Colin Rizzo. The estimate of missing residents varies from one agency to another. According to the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center, about 300 people are missing. Of those, about 200 are from Galveston. However, the number “goes up and down by the minute” as people call in to remove or add names, cautioned executive director Bob Walcutt. The Houston Chronicle reported today that 400 people remained missing, mostly from Galveston County. That figure came from an analysis of calls logged to a hot line set up by the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center to assist local authorities. About 60 of the missing lived on the Bolivar Peninsula, and more than 200 were listed as missing on Galveston Island, according to a city-by-city analysis of the data conducted for the Houston Chronicle by Bob Walcutt, executive director of the recovery center.
At Bolivar Peninsula, the floods rose to at least 18 feet above normal tide, inundating the peninsula, while 100-mile-per-hour winds battered the houses. The wall of water washed scores of homes into the bay beyond the peninsula, leaving a bombed-out landscape of ruins, debris and sand. Law enforcement officers, accompanied by volunteers’ search dogs, continued their long, sweaty march along the marshes of Chambers County Saturday, looking for the remains of Hurricane Ike victims. They targeted some 44 “debris piles” that have been mapped and marked for searchers. The piles contain a maze of broken homes from here and others swept up from the Bolivar Peninsula during Hurricane Ike’s Sept. 13 landfall in Galveston.
Three weeks after Hurricane Ike came ashore, nearly half of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil and gas production remains shut in as pipelines and gas processing plants undergo repairs. The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil and gas activity in the Gulf, said Friday that 48.2 percent of oil production and 44.6 percent of natural gas output remains shut in, meaning valves below the seabed are shut to block the flow. Ike’s storm surge destroyed 52 smaller platforms closer to shore that were producing a combined 13,300 barrels of oil and 90 million cubic feet of gas per day, a fraction of the Gulf’s normal output of 1.3 million barrels of oil and 7.4 billion cubic feet of gas. Another 73 platforms sustained extensive to moderate damage, but the Minerals Management Service has yet to release details on those structures. The only significant deep-water damage reported so far was the loss of the derrick on the drilling rig atop BP’s Mad Dog platform 190 miles south of New Orleans.
But some pipeline systems that needed to bring output to shore remain shut down for post-storm repairs, as do five of 39 onshore natural gas processing plants that were in Ike’s path. The worst damage was a severed 42-inch diameter segment of the High Island Offshore System [Bolivar Peninsula]. Engineers don’t know how it was severed, Rainey said. That system, in about 130 feet of water, transports gas from various fields in the western Gulf. Rainey said the company expects it to be repaired and back in service by late November.
President Bush approved a $23 billion Ike disaster relief package.
Posted by TAB