Nearly 2,000 Brought To Safety In Texas After Ike

The number of victims of Hurricane Ike rose to 25 in nine states Sunday as rescuers said they had registered nearly 2,000 people from the water streets and houses. Glass strewn Houston was placed under a curfew week, and millions of people on the path of the storm remained in the dark.
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As the waters began with the indentation of the first hurricane to make a direct hit on a major American city since Hurricane Katrina, the authorities have planned to go door to door in the night to reach untold numbers of people across the coast of Texas , Which on both sides of the storm and are still in their homes, many without power or supplies.

Many of those who do the safety of buses without knowing where they would end, and without knowing when they can return to what remains of their homes, if anything.

"I do not know what I'm going back. I have nothing," said Arma Eaglin, 52, who was waiting for a bus to a shelter in San Antonio after leaving his home and wade through chest deep water with nothing but her clothes. "I'm confused. I do not know what to do."

The hurricane also hit the heart of the oil industry in the United States: Federal officials said Ike destroyed a number of production platforms, but it was still too early to know what it would have serious consequences for the oil and gas.

Ike was downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved to the people and left Midsection more trouble in its wake. Roads were closed in Kentucky as a result of fierce winds. In the north, to Chicago, dozens of people in the suburbs had to be evacuated by boat. Two million people without electricity in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Of the 25 deaths, five in the hardest hit barrier island town of Galveston, including a body found in a vehicle immersed in water at the airport. Many deaths are outside Texas as the storm slogged north.

Ike 110 mph winds and waves hit Galveston without electricity, gas and communications base - and officials estimated in May can not be repaired for a month.

"We want our citizens to stay where they are," a tired Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. "We must not return to Galveston. You can not live here now."

Houston, the fourth largest city, has been reduced to a paralysis of the neighborhood, in some places. The power is in the center of the office towers Sunday afternoon, and the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex, was spared and remained open. These places were under power lines.

Its two airports - including George Bush Intercontinental, one of the busiest in the United States - were to reopen Monday with service limited, but the schools were closed until further notice, and the business district was part.

Five people were arrested at a pawn shop north of Houston and charged with burglary in what sheriff of Harris County, the spokesman Capt. John Martin described as looting, but there was no generalization peak crime.

The authorities said Sunday noon that 1,984 people were rescued, including 394 by air. In addition to people who were literally pulled to safety, the figure includes those who have been affected by the crew as they waded through water trying to get dry.

Still others chose to stay in their houses along the coast of Texas, even after the danger of the storm had passed. There was no immediate Sunday to count how many people remained in their homes, or how many are in danger. The Red Cross reported 42,000 people were on the state and the Red Cross shelter Saturday night.

The search and rescue effort was the largest in the history of Texas, more than 50 helicopters, 1,500 researchers and teams of federal, state and local agencies.

Once the refugees safe and dry, there was another problem - where they go. Some buses are in shelters in San Antonio and Austin. Shelters in Texas scurried to find enough cots, and some arrived with little money and no idea what the coming days held.

From the town of Orange alone, near the Louisiana line, more than 700 people have tried to dry - "a heroic attempt to organize an evacuation that nobody had expected," said Mayor Brown Claybar.

Hundreds of people have been around a secondary school in Galveston, some with pets, overstuffed Duffel bags and medicine while waiting to board a bus to a shelter. Some did not know where they are and still not know when they can return.

"I have nowhere to go," said Ldyyan Jonjocque, 61, waiting for a bus with maintaining the straps of her four Australian shepherd dogs. She said she had to leave two dogs at home. She wept as she told officers his rescue in a dump truck.

The rescue teams pledged to keep searching until they knocked on all doors and planned to work throughout the night for the second day in a row. They were helped by a lower water, but there were constantly surprised when people sloshed ranks and cities.

Two people who took a flat-bottomed boat to look at a funeral home in the city of Orange, identified by the local cemetery and found dozens of coffins have jumped above the ground water. Only a fence to drag the area.

"I have not seen any bodies, coffins," said one man, Warren Claybar.

The storm also has a toll in Louisiana, where hundreds of houses were flooded and power outages that compounded the state struggling to recover from Hurricane Gustav, which hit on Labor Day.

In Hackberry, La, about 15 miles from the coast, the dismissed employees of a large shrimp boat off the road with a bulldozer, but the team had to stop because of the strong currents in water and see the difficulty of the road.

Ike, which more than 80 deaths in the Caribbean before reaching the United States, has slain seven people in Texas, including a 4-year-old Houston boy who died of poisoning by carbon monoxide from the generator of his family was used to power. Six people died in Louisiana, including a 16-year boy caught in rising water.

Two players were slain by a falling tree in Tennessee, Indiana had four deaths and two Illinois reported storm-related deaths. One person was slain in Arkansas when a tree fell on a mobile home and a tree fell on a house, a person slain in Ohio, where three deceased.

President Bush plans to visit the region Tuesday. On his trip to Texas, Bush said he intends "to express support for the federal government - on the one hand, sympathy and support from the other - for this recovery and reconstruction effort."

The oil industry would like to know how severe damage was inflicted to at least 10 production platforms destroyed by the storm. Characteristics of the size and production capacity of the destruction of the platforms are not readily available, but the damage was a fraction of the 3,800 platforms in the Gulf. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 44 platforms.

As the remnants of the hurricane and listened to the north, heavy rains caused floods and power outages in parts of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

More rain fell in Chicago on top of 6.6 inches Saturday, the teams and 30,000 sand bags placed along the Chicago River was 2 meters above the normal level Sunday. Forty people in the suburbs of Albany Park had to be evacuated by boat.

SWAT commander Sgt. Rodney Harrison and five other members of the Port Arthur Police Department have 2 1/2-ton truck in the waters, looking for victims in Louisiana Sabine Pass, near the border Sunday morning.

The waters were so intense and roads blocked, so that the gear broke in the hand of the driver. After two hours of struggle, the team had little to show for their work than others sopping clothes and exhaust stripes faces. They dodged an even alligator.

"You have people who have families that their home life on the line to come here and save someone a bad decision," said Harrison. "I do not think the law. I do not think fair to everyone."