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(AP)  Massive Hurricane Ike ravaged southeast
Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and
ferocious wind gusts as residents who decided too late they should
have heeded orders to evacuate made futile calls for rescue.
     
 It remained unclear how many people may have perished as the
worst of Ike was passing over the Houston-Galveston area. But even
before daylight arrived, damage was considered extensive. Thousands
of homes and government buildings flooded, roads were washed out,
2.9 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated as
crews could not reach them.

      The biggest fear was that tens of thousands of people had defied
orders to flee and would need to be rescued from submerged homes
and neighborhoods.

      As dawn broke, emergency officials were fielding pleas for help
from residents along the coast who remained behind and were trapped
in their homes. Gov. Rick Perry mobilized 7,500 National Guard
troops and his homeland security chief, Steve McGraw, said rescues
would start as soon as crews could safely go out.

      The eye of the storm powered ashore at 3:10 a.m. EDT at
Galveston with 110 mph winds, just shy of a Category 3 storm.
Because Ike was so huge - nearly as big as Texas itself - hurricane
winds pounded the coast for hours before landfall and would
continue through much of the morning, with the worst winds and rain
after the center came ashore, forecasters said.

      By 9 a.m. EDT, the stubborn storm system had weakened a Category
1 with winds near 90 mph as it moved inland and passed Houston. It
was expected to turn toward Arkansas later in the day.

      Wilson Shaffer, chief of the National Weather Service's
evaluation division, said the storm surge was smaller than
predicted, but the region wasn't out of the clear as the storm
continued on its path. The highest surge Saturday morning was about
13.5 feet at Sabine Pass in Texas, according to tidal gauges. The
surge at Galveston was 11 feet, about half of what was predicted.

      Forecasters had warned that the surge could reach 25 feet, which
would have been the highest in recorded history in Texas, above
1961's Hurricane Carla, a storm that brought a 22-foot wall of
water.

      In Houston, about 60 miles inland, 911 operators received about
1,250 calls in 24 hours. Streets around the city's theater district
became rushing streams and shards of glass fell from the sparkling
skyscrapers that define the skyline of America's fourth-largest
city. Residents were urged to stay inside Saturday morning even if
they thought the storm had passed.

      The only parts of the city with power were downtown and the
massive medical center section. Suppliers warned it could be weeks
before service was restored.

      Though 1 million people fled coastal communities near where the
storm made landfall, authorities in four counties alone said
roughly 140,000 ignored mandatory evacuation orders. Other counties
were unable to provide numbers but officials were concerned many
had stayed behind.

      "We don't know what we are going to find," Galveston Mayor
Lyda Ann Thomas said. "We hope we will find the people who are
left here alive and well."

      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. Emergency crews received about 100 calls for help
during the night but weren't able to immediately respond.

      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.

      Steven Rushing, a commercial fishmerman, tried to ride out the
storm with his wife and several family members, including his
pregnant 17-year-old daughter, in their one-story brick home on
Galveston Island.

      Early Saturday, they watched the water rise and donned life
jackets. When the water reached the TV, about 4 feet high,
Rushing's plan was to kick out a window so they could tie
themselves to a tree and await rescue.

      But then he noticed a sudden calm, apparently the hurricane's
eye passing over. He loaded his family into a 17-foot ski boat and
headed for the San Luis resort, the headquarters for emergency
personnel about 20 blocks away. It took 20 minutes to float 16
blocks before the boat ran aground. Then the Rushings sprinted for
safety, guided by lights from police responding to a 911 call made
from the boat.

      "I'm drained. I'm beat up," Rushing said later Saturday
morning. "My family is traumatized. I kept them here, promising
them everything would be alright, but this is the real deal and I
won't stay no more."

      Some 30 miles inland, storm surge pushing up through Galveston
Bay was sending water into a neighborhood near Johnson Space Center
where Houston Mayor Bill White had made rounds earlier with a
bullhorn trying to compel people to leave. Nearby, the popular
Kemah Boardwalk at the mouth of Galveston Bay, ringed by
million-dollar homes, was submerged, state officials said.

      Across Houston's downtown, car alarms screeched and light poles
swayed like small trees.

      The restaurant Brennan's of Houston, a downtown institution for
more than four decades, was destroyed by flames. Fire officials
said a restaurant worker and his young daughter were taken to a
hospital in critical condition with burns over 70 percent of their
bodies.

      Before it came ashore, the storm was 600 miles across. Because
of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its
largely unprotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat
would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall
of water two stories high - 20 to 25 feet - at the coast.

      But there was some good news: a stranded freighter with 22 men
aboard made it through the brunt of the storm safely, and a tugboat
was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County
gave birth to a baby girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid
of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby
in two decades.

      "It's kind of like riding a bike," Dr. Mark Burns told the New
Braunfels Herald-Zeitung after he helped Ku Paw welcome her fourth
child.

      The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5
million prepackaged meals were being sent to the region, along with
more than 230 generators and 5.6 million liters of water. At least
3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana.

      If Ike is as bad as feared, the storm could travel up Galveston
Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port
of Houston. The port is the nation's second-busiest, and is an
economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and
warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial
equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast
amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products.

      The storm also could force water up the seven bayous that thread
through Houston, swamping neighborhoods so flood-prone that they
get inundated during ordinary rainstorms.

      The oil and gas industry was closely watching Ike because it was
headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and
petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around
$4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages.

      Ike is the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area
since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston,
it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983
came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2
billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population
explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have
never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane.

      On its way through the Gulf toward Texas, Ike spawned
thunderstorms, shut down schools and knocked out power throughout
southern Louisiana on Friday. An estimated 1,200 people were in
state shelters in Monroe and Shreveport, and another 220 in medical
needs shelters.

      In southeastern Louisiana near Houma, Ike breached levees, and
flooded more than 1,800 homes. More than 160 people had to be
rescued from sites of severe flooding, and Gov. Bobby Jindal said
he expected those numbers to grow. In some extreme instances,
residents of low-lying communities where waters continued to rise
continued to refuse National Guard assistance to flee their homes,
authorities said.

      No deaths were officially reported, but crews expected to resume
searching at daybreak near Corpus Christi for a man believed swept
out to sea as Ike closed in.

Gallery

Weather and Climate News

Massive Hurricane Ike ravaged southeast
Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and
ferocious wind gusts as residents who decided too late they should
have heeded orders to evacuate made futile calls for rescue.

Ike roars ashore in Galveston, Texas

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