Ike takes first shots at Texas coast

About 90,000 people refuse to leave home; May intensify before landfall

Vincent Baugh, 12, ran from a wave crashing over the sea wall in Galveston yesterday, where Hurricane Ike was expected to come ashore overnight or today. (JAY JANNER/AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN VIA AP)

HOUSTON - Hurricane Ike, a massive storm almost the size of Texas, strengthened late yesterday and churned toward that state's coast, battering the city of Galveston with 110 mile per hour winds, forcing the shutdown of refineries and oil and gas rigs, and leaving millions of people in the Houston area hunkered down and preparing for the worst.

Authorities braced for a potential catastrophe if Ike made a direct hit on Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, with 2.2 million inhabitants. The city's compact downtown is a clutch of vulnerable, glass-encased skyscrapers that house some of the world's largest energy companies.

The storm, which is 600 miles across, threatened to inundate more than 100,000 homes, cut power to as many as 7.8 million people, and disrupt 40 drinking-water and wastewater-treatment facilities.

About 1.2 million people evacuated coastal communities in the last few days, but tens of thousands ignored calls to leave. Officials said about 90,000 people in three counties alone decided to ride out the storm.

As wind-whipped flood waters began crashing into coastal homes yesterday, many changed their minds. Galveston fire crews rescued more than 300 people who were walking through flooded streets, clutching clothes and other belongings as they tried to wade to safety.

The National Hurricane Center said Ike was close to a Category 3 storm last night as it moved toward the Texas Coast. The storm's center was about 50 miles southeast of Galveston and moving at about 12 miles per hour. The eye is expected to made landfall early today.

The storm was sending towering waves to the Texas coast last night, and meteorologists expect a storm surge as high as 20 feet near where it comes ashore.

"It's a worst-case scenario for us," said Governor Rick Perry of Texas. "It's a tsunami, is what you're looking at." He said the storm is predicted to send waves rushing into the Houston Ship Channel and into Port Arthur, 90 miles to the east.

"My biggest concern is going to be the recovery after a storm of this size," Perry said in a television interview.

In Galveston, the island city close to where the eye of the colossal storm is expected to hit, about 40 percent of the 57,000 residents have stayed, City Manager Steven LeBlanc said.

Forecasters had used stark language to warn that anyone who stayed on Galveston Island risked "certain death."

By yesterday morning, many lower areas of Galveston were already flooding, and waves were sending spray high above the city's protective seawall. LeBlanc said he had received many calls from people who had planned to ride out the storm but were shocked by how quickly the water rose, and who fled or wanted to leave at the last minute.

He said that as of early afternoon, authorities had conducted 12 "high water" rescues. One house burned, and many gas leaks were reported. The west end of the island, unprotected by a seawall, had already been badly chewed up by the storm, LeBlanc said.

Those who had not left were being urged to shelter in place rather than risk the drive on the wind-buffeted causeway connecting the island to the mainland, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. The city opened a "shelter of last resort" in a high school, but it has no cots, just food and water.

Yesterday's biggest human drama centered on the fate of 22 crewmembers aboard a 584-foot Cyprus-flagged freighter, the Antalina, whose engines had stalled and was listing about 100 miles off the coast.

Helicopters were forced to abort a rescue attempt because of high winds. The ship's captain, speaking in a brief telephone interview on CNN, said the freighter was "drifting" because of the water but had electricity. "Everybody's OK," he said.

In Galveston, most of the story was near the sea wall, where a memorial called the Praying Hand commemorates the tragic 1900 storm that killed at least 6,000 people in the nation's worst natural disaster.

Downtown Houston is about 50 miles inland and about 50 feet above sea level, so there was no fear of major flooding there. The biggest concern was skyscrapers' glass breaking and falling. On the upper floors of the tallest buildings, Ike's winds will feel even more powerful, officials said.

After the chaotic experience of Hurricane Rita in 2005, when more people died during the traffic-clogged mass evacuation than during the storm, state and city officials decided this time not to order a full evacuation of Houston, instead telling residents of certain ZIP codes to leave and urging others to shelter at their homes. People appeared to be taking heed.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.