Ike makes landfall in Galveston as a Category 2

Saturday, September 13, 2008

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Ike is slamming the Texas coast.

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Ferocious wind and floodwaters from Hurricane Ike severed power to 1.8 million customers in the Houston area early Saturday as the Category 2 storm made landfall on Galveston Island.

The storm's official landfall, with 110-mph winds, was at 2:10 a.m. CT, the National Hurricane Center said. But it began its assault on the Gulf Coast 18 hours earlier, pushing Gulf of Mexico floodwaters on to Galveston Island.

Winds aloft in the storm were even higher, and officials feared they could hit Houston high-rises extremely hard as it moves inland.

Richard Kotrla in La Marque, Texas, about eight miles from Galveston Bay, said early Saturday that Ike was "shaking this house pretty good."

"My gazebo is a pretzel," Kotrla said.

Houston officials warned residents to stay put because it was no longer safe to try to escape.

Those who stayed were also largely in the dark.

Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said 1.8 million of the power company's 2 million customers -- or 4 million people -- in metropolitan Houston are without electricity as high winds and heavy rains downed power lines.

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"It's going to take several weeks to get all this power restored," he said. "We've been saying two to three weeks."

Galveston Island, south of Houston, had seen a devastating Friday.

"Much of the Galveston Island is currently flooded and there are several fires in that area," the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management said on its Web site. "Many roads in the county are impassable (due) to rising water and debris."

To the east, at least 1,800 homes and businesses were flooded by storm surge in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. And six feet of flood water rushed into the town of Lafitte in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, said Chris Macaluso of Louisiana's Office of Coastal Restoration.

Three deaths have been attributed to the storm.

A 10-year-old boy died north of Houston when a falling tree limb hit him in the head, the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said. One person drowned Friday off the coast of Corpus Christi, Texas. And an elderly person died while being evacuated from a home in Brazoria County to a shelter in Bell County, Texas, said Doc Adams, the county's emergency management coordinator.

Authorities in Galveston imposed a curfew to last until dawn Monday. The town of La Porte also instituted a curfew through 5 a.m. Saturday, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Houston's Harris County is under a curfew that begins at 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday.

Ike is 900 miles wide, measuring the cloud cover at its widest point. On Friday, its tropical storm-force winds extended up to 275 miles -- the length of the Texas coastline -- from its center, for a total reach of about 550 miles.

Galveston had ordered evacuation of the island, but City Manager Steve LeBlanc said about 40 percent of the city's 57,523 residents chose to stay. "It's unfortunate that the warnings that we sent out were not heeded," he said.

LeBlanc said that by 9 p.m. all city personnel would be hunkered down and would not be able to respond to calls until after the storm passed.

Only a few more than 150 people were in a shelter of last resort, he said.

A fire broke out at a Galveston yacht basin, where boats are stored and fixed, said Galveston Fire Chief Michael Varela Sr., and firefighters were unable to reach it because the area was flooded with about 8 feet of water.

If the fire spreads, Varela said, firefighters may be able to contain portions of it. But he said he was more concerned that new fires might break out elsewhere in the city, where many spots are impassable.

About 200,000 residents have fled low-lying areas of metro Houston, which has 4 million residents.

Brennan's, a popular restaurant in downtown Houston for almost four decades, burned down Friday night as Ike battered the city.

Earlier Friday, authorities rescued more than 120 people stranded by rising seas along the southeast Texas coast.

The Coast Guard said early Saturday that 22 people aboard a 584-foot Cyprus-flagged freighter that was adrift without power were safe. The Antalina was 170 miles southeast of Galveston waiting for a motor tugboat to bring it back to port, Coast Guard spokesman Mike O'Berry said.

More than half of the community of Surfside Beach was inundated by 8 a.m. Friday, and rescuers drove a dumptruck through the streets in a final bid to get people out before the storm hits, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Roughly 3.5 million people live in the storm's impact zone, according to federal estimates.

The storm's counterclockwise rotation is likely to push water into Galveston Bay for hour upon hour, battering sea walls and structures.

"I've decided not to evacuate," said iReporter Matteu Erchull on Galveston Island. "We have a lot of faith in the seawall, and we have boards on the windows. Most people on the island live on second or third stories, so they don't have to worry about the water so much."

Erchull later took shelter on the second floor of a Spanish restaurant in Galveston and said late Friday he could see fires burning in the northwest of the island.

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