GALVESTON, Texas–Rescuers flew into a hard-to-reach area of the swamped Gulf Coast Monday and uncovered a devastated landscape: Hurricane Ike had swamped entire subdivisons, and emergency crews feared they would find more victims than survivors.
GALVESTON, Texas–Rescuers flew into a hard-to-reach area of the swamped Gulf Coast Monday and uncovered a devastated landscape: Hurricane Ike had swamped entire subdivisons, and emergency crews feared they would find more victims than survivors.
It was the first time anyone had gotten a look at the damaged resort barrier island of Bolivar Peninusla, just east of hard-hit Galveston. Homes were splintered or completely washed away in the beachfront community that is home to about 30,000 people in the peak summer season.
“They had a lot of devastation over there,” task force leader Chuck Jones said. “It took a direct hit.”
Jones did not have information on whether anyone had died on the island, mainly because leaders still don’t know how many people stayed through the storm that struck early Saturday.
Of particular concern is a resident who collects exotic animals who is now holed up in a Baptist church with his pet lion.
“We’re not going in there,” Jones said. “We know where he (the lion) is on the food chain.”
Days after Ike battered Houston and forced thousands into emergency shelters, the death toll rose to more than 30 in eight states, many of them far to the north of the Gulf Coast as the storm slogged across the nation’s midsection, leaving a trail of flooding and destruction.
Houston, littered with glass from skyscrapers, was placed under a weeklong curfew, and millions of people in the storm’s path remained in the dark.
In Galveston, city officials warned people to stay away from beaches because oil appeared to be floating on the water.
Rescuers said they had saved nearly 2,000 people from waterlogged streets and splintered houses by Sunday afternoon.
Many had ignored evacuation orders and tried to ride out the storm.
Now they were boarding buses for indefinite stays at shelters in San Antonio and Austin.
Brian Smith, public information officer from the Urban Search and Rescue Division of the Texas Engineering Extension Service, said that search and rescue missions continued across the affected area, although no air rescues had been needed since Sunday morning.
“Operations are ongoing,” Smith said. “They will continue until we’ve heard from every local incident commander, and been assured by them that search and rescue missions are no longer needed.”
In hard-hit towns like Orange, Bridge City and Galveston, authorities searched door-to-door into the night, hoping to reach an untold number of people still in their homes, many without power or supplies.
A line of at least 30 cars formed early Monday at a strip mall in Orange, a Texas town on the Louisiana state line east of Beaumont, a day after food and water were distributed there by the National Guard. But the line dispersed after state troopers told the gathering that supplies would be passed out elsewhere.
Lines snaked down side streets at gas stations that had little fuel to sell. Some looked like parking lots. At sites distributing water, ice and prepackaged meals, people stood on foot for hours waiting for anything they could take home.
AP
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