Come Anticipate HURRICANE IKE With Me!

Remember 2005? Well, here it is again!

Man, I just saw somebody's trash cans blow across the road--and it's just Thursday.

Would it be really horrible of me to suggest renaming Houston "Tina" for the next few days?

wow, that bad boy's done some travelling

This is gonna suck.

TrackingIke Tony Plohetski: A few dare-devils are surfing in Galveston but otherwise all but a ghost-town. People gone. about 2 hours ago from web #IKE 32 minutes ago from web

i was in Houston for Rita and it was basically impossible to leave because of traffic, but the entire inner loop was empty of all life. it was amazing.

I really hated the sensationalist local media over in Florida, who almost seemed to want to will Ike over here with their constant ominous warnings.

"Despite all forecasts indicating that Ike is going into the Gulf, OMG U DONT KNOW IT MIGHT TURN BAK ARUOUND AND HIT PENSACOLEAS AN LOOT UR BUILDINGS AND RAPE UR WOMENENE OMG AND UR DAUGHTER IS HAVIN TEH SEX"

oh, and to everyone in Texas...stay safe.

this looks to be no bueno for galveston. i hope the evacuation was less of a clusterfuck this time...

galvesonned

my prayers goin out to east Texas!

For sure. (And having finally read Isaac's Storm last year, it ain't going to be pretty.)

Some slight levity while waiting -- caption this photo:

http://www.latimes.com/media/alternatethumbnails/photo/2008-09/42313370-12075545.jpg

More to the point, you want to shout 'are you CRAZY' at these people:

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-09/42313753.jpg

my favorite hurricane tracking website:

http://www.stormpulse.com/

http://www.weather.com/newscenter/webcams/hurricaneike_webcams.html

"The National Weather Service, in a unusually strongly worded statement, said of the Galveston area: "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one- or two-story homes will face certain death. Many residences of average construction directly on the coast will be destroyed.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900
http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-one-1900

Texans being Texans:

Most residents of Houston, a city of 4 million, are hunkering down in their homes, intending to ride out the storm.

"They've stocked up on food, water and ammo -- as all good Texans should," Culberson said. He said he was not concerned about possible looting.

"There'll be no looting," he said. "If there is, it'll only be once."

now you got me reading about old hurriances...hurricane mitch was a motherfucker...and the "labor day" hurricane had winds of 200mph!!!

HOUSTON - Hurricane Ike, a colossal storm nearly as big as Texas itself, began battering the coast Friday, threatening to obliterate waterfront towns and give the skyscrapers, refineries and docks of the fourth-largest U.S. city their worst pounding in a generation.
As the storm closed in, it trapped 60 people who had to be rescued from the floodwaters by helicopter, sent towering waves smashing over the 17-foot (5-meter) Galveston seawall, breached levees in rural Louisiana, and tossed around a disabled 584-foot (178-meter) cargo ship in the Gulf of Mexico.
About a million people in low-lying coastal areas were ordered to get out well ahead of the storm. But authorities in three counties alone said roughly 90,000 of them refused, despite a warning from forecasters that those staying behind in Galveston faced "certain death."

god.

The sat pictures of it practically filling the gulf are something else

I turned my tasteless joke upthread into a tasteless (and poorly executed - but hey it was my first time) animated gif.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ike

I'm honestly very surprised there isn't more talk about Ike and its aftermath here -- most of Houston is still without power (5 million people!), there's flash flood watches in place for today, and there's been a pretty ominous general silence from Galveston, with officials saying they won't even have a chance to begin proper damage assessment until Monday.

I'm using the Houston Chronicle site as a general local news resource:

http://www.chron.com/

There was also the Galveston Daily News but it's been intermittent since Saturday:

http://www.galvestondailynews.com/

http://incubate.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/iketongue.jpg

I'm gonna get you!

Sorry, I just can't help thinking of him every time I hear about this now!

They're now saying a likely nighttime curfew for Houston all the way through Saturday.

I have been in touch with all my peeps in Houston and everyone seems to be fine. My sister is without power and lives in the NW side of town, yet most of my grad school friends near downtown seem to either have friends with power or power themselves (facebook is useful at a time like this).

i am very curious myself about Galveston. I was really, really worried not so much about Galveston (i took it as a given it would be in big trouble) but the communities on the other side of the bay, no sea wall, and that area tends to flood quite a bit. No reports of disaster yet, but i guess we'll have to wait and see.

it must be like the mindset of Californians....we know one day the Big One (a Cat 4 or 4 monster) will come right over Galveston and Houston and there will be hell to pay...

Cat 4 or 5 that is

Downtown Houston looks like a mess...entire sides of buildings with their windows blown out.

oh and yes maybe the suckiness of this will start to sink in over the coming weeks. My sister's family is coming here (to Austin) until power is back on and I imagine many more will too.

The curfew in Houston is week long now

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/09/14/houston.aftermath/index.html

I read last night that 980 people thus far were directly rescued, via helicopter or boat..sure it's more now. It's good but honestly if you didn't leave the area because you wanted to be a tough Texan and "stare down the storm" (what the fuck does that even mean? only-an-American expression) ...I have less sympathy for you

Thousands perhaps millions might remain without power for weeks! 4 million without electricity now

I think some people didn't really believe it would as bad as stated. It was kind of a case of the boy who cried wolf after Gustav.

No matter how "mandatory" an evacuation is there will always be people who either can't or don't choose to leave. I don't think that really has much to do with a state's "mindset".

Galveston still a mess, the mayor is flat-out telling people to leave and/or stay away.

Some of our student reporters went down this weekend and produced some fantastic stories/photos but so far haven't been able to come back.

Some amazing pictures: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_short_but_eventful_life_of.html

Does anyone know what kind of volume of water the average hurricane will contain? Just curious...

i love the caption of #17

haha...

this has really made me realize how much i consider myself a houstonian...i find myself wishing i was there...

i cant believe 19 is north main st...i can only hope that guy is crouching down pretty low.

incidentally, a small mercy: it's unseasonably cool in Texas right now.

Yes, beautiful weather I feel rather guilty for enjoying.

Caption this photo:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/09/16/us/16ike-337.jpg

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26754232/

Houston mayor not happy with FEMA

Mayor Bill White complained the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasn't bringing in the supplies fast enough, and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett had personally taken over coordination of efforts to hand out relief supplies.

"There are great people working at FEMA," White said. "Let’s just say some people may not be appropriate for their responsibilities.”

...

Can FEMA do more though? I mean, if things really bad down there, and we're talking a city of millions of people.. well.. Rhetorical and literal question.

do more than what?

Help get the victims living on the Texas Coast, E. Texas, W. Louisiana back on their feet.

I stress "rhetorical question". There are countless answers to why things are the way they are. Would even a "best case scenario FEMA" been able to avoid what the victims are going through now? We haven't invented a way for power, supplies, and homes to magically reappear yet.

It's a hard question to answer any way you slice it, because it seems FEMA has never had a great track record, going back to Three Mile Island.

All that aside, the news from Galveston is unsurprisingly getting more grim and heartbreaking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/us/17ike.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

James D. Yarbrough, the Galveston County judge, said a pet tiger, well known to locals, had escaped during the storm and was wandering the ruins of houses on Bolivar Peninsula. “I understand he’s hungry, so we are staying away from him,” Mr. Yarbrough said.

Further Galveston confusion

There were some evacuees bowling where I eat lunch just now. They seemed in high spirits although seeing them all with their wristbands was a little sad.

Editorial from the Galveston Daily News

So whatever happened to the level-4 virus lab in Galveston? And why was this built in a hurricane zone (I know I know.... because no one else wanted it)

Workers at a Galveston, Texas, laboratory said to contain dangerous biological agents secured the pathogens Friday ahead of Hurricane Ike, officials said.

The pathogens, which include the deadly ebola virus, were purposely destroyed before the staff left the facility in advance of the hurricane, said Gov. Rick Perry's spokesman, Andrew Barlow.

The Web site for the University of Texas Medical Branch/Galveston National Labs was completed and opened just recently.

The lab is one of the country's five biosafety labs that are Level-IV, the highest level. Such laboratories typically handle pathogens like smallpox, tularemia and anthrax to develop vaccines and antidotes.

The laboratory followed protocols for shutting, said Gretchen Michael, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She said that for security reasons, she would not detail the procedures or describe the agents.

A Department of Homeland Security official concurred that all the samples had been destroyed, and the building was locked down, quarantined and "rendered safe."

But a former student who worked at the Level-III laboratory while the Level-IV facility was being constructed and who knows the manager, said she would be surprised if all of the pathogens had been destroyed, since some of them are rare and extremely valuable.

The facility is the World Health Organization's center for research on arboviruses, such as ticks and mosquitoes, and tropical disease work, said the student, who asked not to be identified.

It also holds ebola virus and fever-causing lassa virus, sometimes-fatal hantaviruses and anthrax bacteria, she said.

She added that all Level-IV laboratories are designed to ensure they can withstand hurricanes, and because of its location, special care was taken with the laboratory in Galveston.

"I know that everyone at that facility, every single person at that facility, I'm certain has done everything they could possibly do to ensure that the community and the facility is absolutely safe, because all the people that work there, their livelihood and careers are dependent on the things that are held in that lab, and they would be destroyed -- just as much as the community would be destroyed -- if anything were to happen," she said.

CDC spokesman Von Roebuck said only that "quite a bit has been done" to secure the laboratory

it was built in a hurricane zone because the school won the bid

I'm wondering how FEMA decides how to reimburse evacuees. There was a lady on last night who was refusing to leave a hotel. They were trying to kick her out b/c FEMA hadn't paid yet but she refused to go to a shelter. Why should FEMA be paying for some people to stay at hotel while reimbursing the city for others sleeping on a convention center floor?

The natives are getting restless. And I don't blame 'em, really.

As an Andrew and Wilma survivor (my parents were without power for more than two weeks after Wilma, although the groceries stores were open), I sympathize.

Galveston is supposed to reopen on Wednesday. Excepting of course those who live on the West End, who can only look and leave.

I posted Elvis T's level 4 lab concern elsewhere

Get ready for a whole new breeding ground (sorry) of biologyxploitation films/stories/conspiracies based on Hurricane Ike.

the heat is back, still no power for lots of people in houston as well.

The comments to the top entry of Ned's link are the most angering and frustrating. Do not read if you want to keep your hands from tearing the hair off your head.

god I wish I hadn't read them now.

You were warned.

Couldn't call it unexpected Re:Balinese

wtffffffffffffffffffff

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081031/D945EQT80.html

seriously "we are out of places to keep them so we are now housing natural disaster refugees on ABANDONED CRUISE SHIPS IN THE FUCKING GULF OF MEXICO" is on some robocop shit

isn't this like the third time they've done this after gulf coast hurricanes though

yeah i have since heard

This Week's Houston Press Cover Story about Galveston by sometime ILM poster novamax

I've thought about this from time to time -- as the article notes, the attention of the news media firmly shiftedquickly, to my mind right around the time Paulson first mentioned the $700 billion amount, and never returned.

Very good article, BTW, am about half way through it.

This Week's Houston Press Cover Story about Galveston one year later by sometimes ILM poster Novamax.