Voluntary evacuations were under way along the Texas Gulf Coast on Tuesday as officials prepared for a potential multibillion-dollar disaster when Hurricane Ike reaches the Gulf Coast later this week.
As many as 1,000 evacuees were expected to begin arriving as early as Wednesday morning in Lubbock, in the northwest corner of the state, after Gov. Rick Perry declared emergencies in 88 counties and placed 7,500 National Guard troops on alert.
They were expected to overflow the capacity of the city’s Coliseum, which was set up as an evacuation center. Officials put out a call for volunteers to help with the flow of evacuees and were planning to set up a second location in the city’s Civic Center, said Kevin Overstreet, Lubbock’s emergency management director.
At 11 p.m. ET, Ike had entered the Gulf of Mexico as it moved away from Cuba, where it left a double trail of destruction. The storm was centered 120 miles west of Havana and was moving west-northwest near 9 mph, with maximum sustained winds near 80 mph.
Forecasters said it would strengthen, perhaps to a Category 3 storm with winds over 110 mph, before hitting the Texas coast late in the week.
“When it’s out of Cuba, it has the potential to become a lot stronger,” said Felix Garcia, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
‘Worst-case scenario’
Current projections placed Ike crossing the Texas coast Friday night or Saturday morning near Corpus Christi, where Nueces County officials convened an emergency planning call Tuesday. The county, which has no permanent shelters, began bringing in buses and ambulances to handle evacuations expected later in the week.
In Louisiana, where thousands of homes remained without power after Hurricane Gustav hit last week, Gov. Bobby Jindal urged residents to start stockpiling food, water, batteries and other supplies in case the hurricane veered east. The state also was readying shelters and making plans for trains, buses and planes in case a coastal evacuation is called later in the week.
Local authorities and insurance officials warned that Ike could be shaping up as the “worst-case scenario.” Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said her city was using models of the catastrophic 1900 hurricane, which killed at least 6,000 people, in its planning for Ike.
“It’s the storm we’ve talked about but hoped would never happen,” said Mark Hanna, a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Texas. If Ike were to strike Galveston and then enter the Houston Ship Channel, damage “would rival hurricanes Andrew or Katrina,” he said.
Jim Oliver, general manager of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, said the agency’s insurance exposure in Galveston County alone was more than $18 billion.
“Nobody will be ready if a Category 3 or worse hits,” he predicted.
Texas prepares for evacuations
Officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was too early to recommend evacuations along the Gulf Coast, but they said they would have a much clearer picture as early as Wednesday.
In Texas, officials were taking no chances. State transportation officials began establishing evacuation routes from the coast to North Texas, where the Dallas Convention Center was designated as the region’s primary evacuation center.
A state fuel team was dispatched to trace the routes toward Dallas, making sure enough gasoline would be available for the tens of thousands of vehicles that may travel the roads. Meanwhile, Texas officials contacted their counterparts in Oklahoma to arrange emergency shelter for 12,500 patients with special medical needs.
In Louisiana, many residents and businesses were not even bothering to take down the boards they put up ahead of Hurricane Gustav early last week.
“We left them up just in case — we’re unsure about the other storms that are out in the gulf,” said Nancy Jordan of Lake Charles.
“It’s just hard to believe that we’re going to have to do this again,” she said. “I know that a lot of people in the community have struggled financially with having to evacuate, but I think we have to in order to be safe.”
