Hurricane Ike Makes Landfall; Millions Without Power

Hurricane Ike roared ashore last night and widespread flooding occurred along low lying areas. It will take some time before reports come in from far flung places along the Gulf Coast since at least 3 million people are without power. It may take weeks before full power is restored.

Galveston took it on the chin, may have escape the dreaded storm surge that was predicted to top out higher than the storm wall protection at 15 feet. However, other communities aren't protected by sea walls, so the storm surge affected them more. The surge map at the top shows what may have happened during the storm. The storm surge looks like it topped out below 15 feet in Galveston.

We haven't gotten any significant information about Galveston yet. Here are tide levels this morning, around high tide, from stations that managed to report:

Eagle Point: 10.14 feet
Pier 21: 10.69 feet
Pleasure Pier 9.19 feet
Freeport: 5.44 feet

The tide levels appear slightly lower than forecast and underscore the fact that a strike on Galveston Island's east end produced a lower overall surge across the island. Forecasters now say the maximum tide in Galveston Island was probably 15 feet or less.

We won't have an idea of the carnage caused by such tides until later today.

The estimate for a maximum high tide for the shoreline of Galveston Bay is now between 14 to 18 feet, which is also below previous estimates. There still are thousands of homes vulnerable to those tide levels, of course.

A major problem is that the storm tracked directly along the industrial corridor between Galveston and Houston, affecting the oil refineries and energy infrastructure that much of the country relies upon for the insatiable demand for gasoline and oil products. That's going to be a long lasting effect from the storm, and it once again highlights the need to build more refineries around the country to spread the risk of loss from any one single natural disaster, as well as increase refining capacity.

The storm is now moving North of the Houston area, but continues dropping significant amounts of rain - 1 to 2 inches per hour in places. Flooding is likely as well. Even though the storm is well inland, it's still bringing winds above 100 mph. However, the wind field of tropical and hurricane force winds is greatly diminished and will continue slowing as the storm loses power over land.

Brendan Loy notes that a massive rescue plan will be set in motion as the storm passes. He also notes that the way the media hyped the possibility of the 15-25 foot storm surge may lead to complacency down the road. That's quite true and the media really needs to reevaluate how they pass along information like this.

Hopefully the media will report it, rather than ignoring it. When a hurricane underperforms expectations, people need to be told this — and, if possible, be told why it happened — rather than being subjected to ongoing, unrelenting hype that pretends a lucky non-calamity was the calamity we feared. When the hype continues as if nothing has changed, the public is less likely to recognize that things could easily have been far worse, and that the doom-and-gloom predictions actually appeared fully justified at the time they were made, based on then-available data. This leads to ever more cynicism and complacency about future predictions. This is actually where the media screws up most severely in my view: in failing to ramp down the hype, once it becomes clearly unjustified.

Still, it will be some time before the full extent of the storm damage is known.

The Houston Chronicle chastises those who decided to remain in Galveston despite the dire predictions. Yes, the predictions didn't come to pass thankfully, but that's not a good reason to have risked one's life to stay put. If those predictions had come to pass, we'd be looking at a death toll that would be intolerable in this day and age when everyone had more than fair warning of the impending storm. The idea that it's just water, as remarked by one landowner near the Texas coast is dangerous. Water in sufficient amounts can destroy everything in its path and sweep away a person with little effort.

Ike is still a category 1 hurricane, with sustained winds of up to 90 mph gusting to 100 mph, and it's moving to the North at 18 mph. It's expected to start moving to the Northeast later today.

UPDATE:
This Investors Business Daily editorial explores the issues behind why so much energy infrastructure is present along the Houston/Galveston corridor, which also happens to be squarely within hurricane country.

UPDATE:
People chose poorly. The state will now begin conducting rescue operations as soon as it's safe for emergency personnel to begin operating. Calls were being fielded from thousands who needed to be rescued from their homes in places where people should have evacuated and didn't.

UPDATE:
Residents from Houston are waking up to find widespread damage. Skyscrapers in Houston have had their windows blown out by the winds, and debris can be found all over town. The photo to the left is via Daylife.com.






Meanwhile, the photo to the right shows the damage to Galveston from the rising flood waters yesterday. It's still not clear what kind of damage the storm brought overnight, but given the early reports, it's safe to say that it's widespread and some areas are likely not to recover for years.

Flooding extends well into Louisiana, including Crown Point, Terrebonne and Lafourche.

The 22-person crew on board a freighter that was left adrift in the Gulf of Mexico came through the storm safely.

Several fires were reported in Houston overnight while firefighters remained hunkered down safe from the storm's winds. Also, note that some people had a change of heart at the last moment yesterday about remaining in their homes prior to Ike's landfall:

As the front of the storm moved into Galveston, fire crews rescued nearly 300 people who changed their minds and fled at the last minute. Six feet of water had collected in the Galveston County Courthouse in the island's downtown, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston was flooded, according to local storm reports on the National Weather Service's Web site.

Even before Ike made landfall, Coast Guard helicopters had rescued 103 people in the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston Island, some from roofs and others from cars, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ayla Stevens.

UPDATE:
Texas Rainmaker and Dr. Melissa Clouthier had been liveblogging the storm into the early hours this morning. Here's hoping they made it through okay.

UPDATE:
Shades of Katrina and Rita as rescuers begin the task of trying to rescue people stranded in their homes by flood waters.

The Houston Chronicle is blogging with constant updates. Galveston is under 2-4 feet of water, including the University of Texas Medical Branch. The saving grace for Galveston is that the eye shifted to the East prior to landfall, putting the city on the weaker side of the storm.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin has a huge roundup.