FREEPORT, Texas - Thousands of residents of Texas' vulnerable Gulf Coast clogged highways heading inland yesterday as they heeded mandatory evacuation orders. Hurricane Ike churned through warm gulf waters and took aim at southeast Texas.
Facing a hurricane that Gov. Rick Perry said could have "extraordinary impact," authorities ordered the evacuation of residents of low-lying coastal areas south and east of Houston. Chemical companies and refineries shut down their plants, bracing for high winds and damaging floods.
"I can't overemphasize the danger that is facing us," Perry said in Austin. Ike is "going to do some substantial damage. It's going to knock out power, and it's going to cause massive flooding."
Nearly 1 million people along the Texas coast were ordered to flee inland ahead of the storm. But in a calculated risk aimed at avoiding total gridlock, authorities told most people in Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, to just hunker down.
Ike was a Category 2 storm late yesterday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Forecasters predicted it would strengthen to Category 3, with winds of at least 111 mph - and possibly a Category 4 - before making landfall late today or early tomorrow.
Most of the evacuations were limited to sections of Harris County outside Houston, as well as nearby bayous and Galveston Bay. But the 2 million residents of the city itself and 1 million in other areas of the county were asked to remain at home.
"We are still saying: Please shelter in place, or to use the Texas expression, hunker down," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county's chief administrator. "For the vast majority of people who live in our area, stay where you are. The winds will blow and they'll howl and we'll get a lot of rain, but if you lose power and need to leave, you can do that later."
The storm was expected to curl northeast after hitting the Texas coast, pushing with reduced ferocity into east Texas and Arkansas over the weekend.
Landfall is expected near Freeport, a shrimp and chemical center 60 miles south of Houston. The streets of the town were empty yesterday, in contrast to highways closer to Houston, which were jammed with people fleeing the storm.
"I'm spending the night on my shrimp boat, watching the Weather Channel on the satellite," said Rick Beale, 51, a shrimp fisherman and one of the few people left in Freeport. Standing near a line of anchored shrimp boats, Beale said he would decide today whether to "ride it out or just get out."
