Ike intensifies as it closes in on Texas
Ike, packing sustained winds of 105 mph, picked up steam as it churned west-northwest through the Gulf of Mexico toward Texas at about 13 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Ike's eye was about 365 miles east of Corpus Christi and about 265 miles southeast of Galveston.
Hurricane conditions were expected to reach the Texas coast Friday, the center said. Coastal storm surge flooding of up to 20 feet above normal tide levels was predicted.
"A storm of this size is able to bring more wind over a surface of water," Patrick Blood, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Houston Chronicle. "You can imagine what a 20-foot wall of water can do to a community."
Residents living on the coast beyond a seawall are sure to "face certain death" if they fail to evacuate, Blood said.
Computer models indicated Houston would have a direct hit from Ike, forecasters said. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for six counties and for nearly 245,000 residents in parts of Harris County, where Houston is located, the Chronicle said.
"The vast majority of people have heeded the recommendations to evacuate in the storm surge areas and traffic is moving although there are some bottlenecks on I-45," said Houston Mayor Bill White.
CenterPoint Energy and Entergy, the two companies handling power line transmission for the greater Houston areas, spent Thursday coordinating with the state's grid operator, staging service trucks and personnel in advance of Ike's expected landfall, the Chronicle reported.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
