Hurricane Ike Poised to Strike Galveston

Hurricane Ike is going to kill a lot of people who don't evacuate Galveston and the surrounding Texas coast before it strikes tonight. I just heard a disturbing report on MSNBC that disabled residents have yet to be evacuated and can't reach emergency authorities on the phone. Weather Underground Jeff Masters offers this grim assessment:

Hurricane Ike is closing in on Texas, and stands poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time. Despite Ike's rated Category 2 strength, the hurricane is much larger and more powerful than Category 5 Katrina or Category 5 Rita. The storm surge from Ike could rival Katrina's, inundating a 200-mile stretch of coast from Galveston to Cameron, Louisiana with waters over 15 feet high. ... Ike continues to grow larger and has intensified slightly since yesterday, and the hurricane's Integrated Kinetic Energy has increased from 134 to 149 Terajoules. This is 30% higher than Katrina's total energy at landfall. All this extra energy has gone into piling up a vast storm surge that will probably be higher than anything in recorded history along the Texas coast. Storm surge heights of 20-25 feet are possible from Galveston northwards to the Louisiana border.

We helped talk some relatives into evacuating Houston. The last massive storm to strike Galveston, the 1900 hurricane, killed from 6,000 to 12,000 residents -- one third of the town's population -- and rewrote Texas history. Before the storm, Galveston was the largest cotton port in the U.S. and one of the state's largest economic centers, home to 18 different newspapers. Afterward, Houston took its place.

Weather · Texas · 2008/09/12 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

The local, state, and national goverment need to start building huge shelters for these storms. large complexs where during the hurricanes, the disabled, elderly, and others, can seek shelter locally. Something along the lines of bomb shelter that have power, food, and water for up to two-three weeks and transports that can go to the local areas and pick people up.

#1 · rex · 2008/09/12

"The local, state, and national goverment need to start building huge shelters for these storms."

See? I knew you were a socialist! You want to Big Brother your neighbor and guide him to the 'shelter'. What a prince of compassion you just happen to be!

The world is a village, right Rex? It needs guidance to help protect every single person and treat them with benefits for natural disasters. Buses so they can conserve on gasoline, disciplined and practiced evacuation directed by Homeland Security (no exceptions in our free society) and carried out by armed police and military guard. No one allowed to save themselves, anymore, since universal compliance (like state medical care) is demanded - not requested.

"A shelter in every locality!"

Brought to you by the evil rich and greedy oil companies ready to be squeezed like turnips, and every citizens individual donation of $122,259.29 over the next 12 generations, as a preliminary cost estimate (not counting food, medical, and other supplies needed to be stored and periodically replaced), but sure to grow a bit ...

Diane Feinstein can give her husband the bid information for the trillions in cost of construction, and Reid can get his buddy to make the land deals, Obama can organize the mid-West union companies to construct there ... Pelosi can find some socialist real estate experts to work the West ...

They are already ahead of you, Rex, note: New Orleans. Your socialist stripes are way too late to be painting on, now. They constructed nice, barbed-wire temporary camps in Denver to handle the overcrowding expected there for the convention - so empathetic of them!

Say! They can also use the "Safety Centers" for teaching children about male-male and female-female sex techniques! In emergency, reactionary rightwingers can be housed there for their own protection and re-education. What a great idea! Some could even have alternative power plants and use alternative fuels for generating the heat to run the turbines ... lots of side products too ... like candles ... isn't that what national socialism is all about?

#2 · tadowe · 2008/09/13

It was just a thought.

#3 · rex · 2008/09/13

Thanks goodness that Rogers sense of journalistic drama didn't actually result in the death toll predicted by the slightly greenish Progressives, intent on ruling the world via CO2 socialist tyranny; eventually taxing your exhalations based on an hourly CO2 polution factor which is an individual attack on the abstract, unbreathing *Collective* entity of society.

That's the result of allowing these *always* screaming Chicken Littles of the Left any validity, whatsover!

#4 · tadowe · 2008/09/15

I mean, only 5 people died. That sucks; I wish more citizens of Galveston stayed at home so the mortality numbers would have been higher!

#5 · tadowe · 2008/09/16