Ike caused "a few deaths," surges: Chertoff

Source: Reuters

Ike caused "a few deaths," surges: Chertoff

Sat Sep 13, 2008 3:11pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said there were unconfirmed reports of "a few deaths" from Hurricane Ike, which slammed the Texas coast on Saturday.

"We have already heard some initial reports of a few deaths," he said. "Obviously one death is more than we want to hear about." Chertoff cited "significant surges" and damage in Texas and Louisiana.

"This has been a very dangerous storm. There will be a lot of rain and the rain will continue to cause flooding problems," Chertoff told reporters.

He refused to say whether he expected the death toll to rise. "I don't want to speculate," Chertoff said. "If someone stayed in an area predicted to be largely flooded, they put their lives at risk."
(more at link)

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN1340091320080913

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Bla Bla Bla... He's clueless! AGAIN!

Wake UP people, This storm did some MAJOR damage in Texas and a LOT of people in Western Louisiana are not even being talked about, but reports last night were of people on rooftops!!!

THIS looks like it is becoming a replay of the inept response to Hurricane Katrina, but it could be an even worse response!!! Because of the way the GOP let down their level of alert after Gustav.

Please, get off the petty bickering that's still going on here and in the so-called MSM and post more News about the people who need your attention right now!

Despite his reporting from the edge of the storm.

The cable "news" SUCKS! Again!:banghead: :rant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLZ7lK7-G_A

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy! LOL!

That's the GOP in a nutshell. One death is more than I want to have occurred.
They just don't want to hear about it.

So mum's the word, everybody.

...and that's only the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure.

hasn't received any requests for search and rescue. This was right after seeing a report that 911 was being flooded with calls from people stating that they were trapped in their homes.

So which one is it??? Are the locals just not requesting help from FEMA? FEMA is still one big mess?

...so they don't have to spend all the money that's being funneled to their Cayman Islands bank accounts. :tinfoilhat:

We can't let them get away this this CRAP again!

seen reporters practically yelling about Beaumont, Slidell,LA is also underwater, I've also seen that levees were breached in and around NOLA, and there is NO coverage from any of these areas, and from Galveston, except the part that is underwater that is protected by the sea wall. The footage that I've seen from the west end is that the houses are mostly washed away. I keep hearing reports that the east end, unprotected by the sea wall is in bad shape. WTF? This is nothing like the coverage of Katrina, and I'm not trying to equate the 2, but this storm was a monster with the flooding, etc. And the media isn't supposed to take pictures of "sensitive situations"?

No search and rescue??? This is just getting stranger and weirder to me by the minute.

We go through this dance after every major hurricane.

Why doesn't FEMA want to own up to the scale of disasters. I just don't get it. :shrug:

(sad sarcasm).

There is the aroma of a news blackout in the air...

Speaking professionally, even the best disaster response is a mess. It is very much a mess for the first day or two. These storms make a true mess of things, you can't get to the places you need to go, cell phone service goes down, landlines are dead, roads are blocked and flooded, people don't stay in one place to be counted, and regular folks start doing stupid things and getting hurt.

The thing to track, if you can, is the deployment of refrigerated semi trucks. They have their own power to run refrigeration and are used as makeshift morgues.

That makes sense... Otherwise it wouldn't be a disaster, aye? It would be a party. I like how you think.

they can control what we the people see of it. I heard a report that they asked reporters not to take inappropriate photos -- that would be photos of dead people. Same strategy as not letting the press take photos of war funerals.

Then, too, New Orleans was a liberal city with in a state with a Democratic governor. They could allow more to be seen of New Orleans' and blame at least the initial disaster on inept Democratic leadership. Houston has an awful lot of Republican connections (oil money, for sure) and a Republican governor; after seeing the long-term bad PR FEMA got after Katrina, it is very much in this administration's best interests to keep as much of the devastation under wraps for as long as they can. This is true not only about finding bodies, but also with regard to the amount of environmental damage done by the country's largest concentration of oil and petrochemical facilities in the country having been directly in the storm path. It's a mess down there and people have died and are dying still, I'll warrant. :(

think 20,000 people died in Ike?

and large areas are now barren moonscapes... :shrug:

primarily because you don't care how many die

it seems to be overwhelmed right now so please use it responsibly. You can list yourself as safe or search for people.

https://disastersafe.redcross.org/

Galveston residents and officials assess Ike's wrath



In Galveston today, storm-battered residents who declined to evacuate from Hurricane Ike's path gingerly crept from their homes to assess the damage.

Galveston officials today worried about the fate of about 23,000 people who ignored a mandatory evacuation order.

Some tried to call for rescues as the hurricane struck, but dispatchers had to decline because emergency units were taken off the streets.

The storm surge was expected to be 14 feet to 17 feet on Galveston Island. Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said the surge peaked at 11 to 12 feet on the west side of the storm and is expected to recede. However, the surge is now pushing to the east, he added.

"We don't know what we're going to find (today)," said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "We hope we'll find that the people who didn't leave here are alive and well."

Galveston officials this afternoon said they were no confirmed fatalties so far. Officials said they are continuing to rescue people. They had searched 42 buildings and rescued 27 people who were taken to the Ball High School shelter.

Ten buildings have burned to the ground because the fire department could not get to them. Seven buildings collapsed because of wind. Two of the seven that collapsed were apartment buildings. Officials said they don't know if anyone was inside.

Going east to west on the 32-mile long island, emergency rescue personnel have been able to get as far as the 11 mile road marker. That means roughly two-thirds of the island still remains inaccessible.

Huge areas of the island remain underwater. At an afternoon press conference, Thomas said officials they were intiating a recovery plan, but would not provide more details about the plan.

A spokesperson for the mayor said National Guard troops are on the way, though National Guard helicopters are already there.

No one is allowed into the island. There's still a lot of debris on the causeway. They have cleared a path so people can get off island.

The Galveston Fire Department received more than 100 calls after emergency personnel had ceased rescue operations at around 7 p.m. Friday night, and Fire Chief Michael A. Varela, Sr., said they planned to make those visits ''as soon as weather permits."

Those who called were told to ''be patient, to get up as high as they can, get in their homes" and that rescuers ''will get to them as soon as we can."

In Austin, state emergency officials said water was encroaching from both ends of the island as well as over the seawall. The University of Texas Medical Branch was taking on water, officials said....>

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5999540.html

That's sounds very bad, but don't tell the Republicans be they "don't want to hear about it.":banghead: :grr:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jG1m4XT341oCKXPMIZlKffdhP9vwD9364ER00

By air, boat and truck, search on for Ike victims

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN and PAULINE ARRILLAGA


. . .By evening, it appeared that Ike was not the single calamitous stroke that forecasters had feared. But the full extent of the damage — or even a rough sense of how many people may have perished — was still unclear, in part because many roads were impassable.

Some authorities feared that this could instead become a slow-motion disaster, with thousands of victims trapped in their homes, waiting for days to be rescued.

"We will be doing this probably for the next week or more. We hope it doesn't turn into a recovery," said Sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Marlow in Orange County, where more than 300 people had to be rescued from flooded homes. He said that was only "a drop in the bucket" compared with the number still stranded.

By some estimates, more than 140,000 of the 1 million or so people who had been ordered to evacuate the coast as Ike drew near may have tried to tough it out. Many of them evidently realized the mistake too late, and pleaded with authorities in vain to save them overnight.

with the spouse a few minutes ago. It certainly seems to me that hey are 'sanitizing' that area before any media gets in.

I think it will be bad.

So sad. If we would spend as much on our infrastructure as we do on war, this would be a very different country.

<>:patriot:

I'll post a juicy bit of it:


"This is a quaint little community of retirees and folks who have purchased REASONABLY-priced homes. No million dollar homes here.

And if people in Boliver stayed, it was to protect what was most likely one of their prized possesssions, a home.

Unlike New Orleans, where people stayed behind because they were just plain stupid...or because they were waiting for their next welfare check. They're poor and indigent because it's a CHOICE they make. They have the same opportunities the rest of us have. But they CHOOSE not to finish high school (or even middle school), they CHOOSE not to go to college (financial aid is available to EVERYONE). And they're dependent on the government programs to pay for their babies born out-of-wedlock, because they're too lazy to buy a condom."


I WONDER who that person's going to vote for?

http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/ike.html

on one show, a reporter who had just left galveston island said he was curious to know what had become of a particular area - it starts with a "B" but i can't remember the name! but anyhow the anchor said they had seen footage of that area and weren't allowed to show it?? and it was bad...

i wonder if they're not blacking out information on what went on. i had the feed on all night long and every time i woke up it seems the storm was worse.

have Crystal Beach and Gilcrest on the Bolivar Peninsula as being devastated. Eyewitnesses have described those communities as being "gone".

Crystal Beach... there's a lot of wreckage everywhere.

I saw a bunch of photos last night but I can't find them today. :(

There's a picture of Gilchrist in this article:

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/1164536,WA15_ike_s1.article

I saw the same house from other angles, and it just looks like a house standing out on a mudflat as far as you can see. There might be a small handful of other buildings that made it, but they're not near this house.

Here's an even better picture:

http://www.theage.com.au/world/thousands-rescued-as-ike-toll-rises-20080915-4h2u.html

I've been trying to find updates on it also and have been unable to find anything.

thank you. if i wasn't hearing things, they have footage and "can't show it." if that's not a blackout i don't know what is. and it portends really bad news.

Centerpoint's restoring power (for instance, to where I live ... it failed intermittently from 12 pm to 12:30 am, then kicked off for the duration. You have 2.1 million customers (out of 2.26 million) without power, and it's slow going. They seem prepared. We'll see.

Apt. complex I'm in came through ok; no apts. flooded, but carports were trashed and the parking areas were mid-calf-deep in water. Our "damage" consisted in having some towels soak up water that leaked under windows. A propane stove let us have pancakes and eggs for breakfast. Power came back on as the karahi gosht I was heating up (served over basmati, of course) was almost done. A group having a cookout on the apt. complex commons deck sent up a cry of celebration. It's not like we were hit hard at all--well, except the few whose cars were under the carpots.

Note that we're well out of any storm surge area, far from the nearest bayou (Braes'). Not far from the Reliant Center, which supposedly sustained some decent damage. And not far from a CenterPoint base of operations, not far from transmission lines that they'd need to have up and running to help lots of other people. A visual inspection today told me that the power failure here wasn't because of anything wrong on or near the apt. complex, so when the trunkline got power, we got power.

Other areas have been hit much worse. Much worse. But it could have been worse yet. Might try to find some place to volunteer.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/weather/2008/09/14/vo.crystal.beach.cnn

The rumors were correct...Crystal Beach was devastated.

Medal of Freedom for ya'