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Texas girds for the worst as deadly Ike closes in
2008-09-10
HOUSTON, Texas (AFP) - Texas authorities ordered coastal evacuations Wednesday as deadly Hurricane Ike strengthened to a Category Two storm in the Gulf of Mexico and headed toward the southern US coast after ravaging Cuba and the Caribbean. Ike could slam into the Texas coast immediately south of the port of Galveston early Saturday as an even stronger storm, the National Hurricane Center forecast. At 2100 GMT the center of Ike was located about 1,155 kilometers (720 miles) east of Brownsville, Texas, on the border with Mexico, the center said. The storm was moving towards the northwest at near 13 kilometers (eight miles) an hour. Ike packed winds of near 160 kilometers (100 miles) an hour, with higher gusts, though it is expected to gain strength over the next 24 hours as it travels over the warm open waters of the Gulf. The hurricane center described Ike as "a very large tropical cyclone," with hurricane force winds extending outward up to 150 kilometers (90 miles). The city of Houston, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) inland from Galveston, placed emergency personnel on standby to deal with fallout from Ike's imminent arrival. "We're making sure fuel tanks are topped off and that high water rescue boats are ready," said city spokesman Frank Michel. Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell said it would complete evacuation of personnel from its offshore installations by Wednesday. The bulk of US oil refineries are located in the Gulf of Mexico. President George W. Bush declared an emergency in Texas, freeing up federal aid to boost local efforts. Texas Governor Rick Perry, who declared a disaster threat in 88 counties on and near his state's Gulf coast on Monday, said state officials began helping evacuate ill, elderly and poor residents in coastal areas. "The next few days will be crucial for residents to follow the direction of local leaders and to take the necessary steps to protect themselves and their families," Perry said Wednesday in a statement. Galveston city spokeswoman Alicia Cahill says many residents have fresh memories of Hurricane Rita, a powerful system heading in their direction in 2005 just weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Two million people tried to flee the Galveston-Houston area before Rita hit, creating massive highway traffic jams with 20-hour backups. Rita however shifted in the last hours and made landfall east near the border with Louisiana, and the damage to the area was minimal. Texans living on the Gulf Coast also still recall the "Great Storm" of 1900, a mighty hurricane that killed some 6,000 people and produced a storm surge that submerged much of Galveston. Officials in the Texas coastal city of Corpus Christi said they were reluctant to order a mandatory evacuation on Wednesday. "We have a huge oil and gas industry presence here with refineries and oil and gas processing facilities," said city spokeswoman Kim Womack. "We don't want to issue a mandatory evacuation because that would completely shut down operations and make recovery very difficult." Residents however were busy preparing for the storm. "A lot of boards are going up around town," Womack said. "Everyone is in a ready state." Ike earlier left a trail of destruction as it raged over Cuba and killed more than 100 people across the Caribbean. In Haiti, several hundred were killed by a rapid succession of powerful tropical storms and hurricanes over the past month including Ike. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the United States will provide 10 million dollars in aid to help storm-ravaged Haiti recover from deadly tropical storms. "Our highest priority is to help deliver urgently needed relief supplies to communities which are now cut off from overland access," Perino said. On Tuesday, Ike crashed into Cuba's Pinar del Rio province from the south barely 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of the capital Havana, sparking new flooding in a region blasted two weeks ago by Hurricane Gustav. Five Cubans were confirmed dead after some 2.6 million people were moved to safer ground as a safety measure. "Nature gave us another blow. We hadn't even got up from Gustav. Two storms in such a short space of time is terrible," a resident of Pinar del Rio told AFP by telephone. Gustav charged into Cuba's westernmost province on August 30 and destroyed or severely damaged 140,000 homes and buildings before churning into Gulf of Mexico. Although Ike was much weaker than Gustav -- it was a Category One storm against a Category Four storm on the five-notch Saffir-Simpson scale -- it compounded Pinar del Rio's devastation, where some 100,000 homes were already destroyed and 600 schools damaged.
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