http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/us/17ike.html-snip-
In Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city and the center of its oil industry, signs of prolonged blackout are everywhere — in long lines at the few gasoline stations with power to run pumps, in the huge demand for ice at government food-distribution centers, in the low number of grocery stores that are open, and in the grumbling of ordinary citizens. Refineries in Texas remain closed.
Most of Houston was coping without refrigerators, air-conditioners and pumps to provide water pressure both for drinking water and for sewage plants.
-snip-
Throughout the day, tree-trimming crews and line workers were arriving from states as far away as California and Pennsylvania to help the local utilities, which had already deployed about 8,500 workers.
Beleaguered residents, many of whom have been without power since Friday, treated the utility workers like heroes.
-snip-
Herman Marino, a line worker from Denver, said the damage to Galveston’s power lines was the worst he had ever seen, including the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
-snip-
In eastern Texas, near the Louisiana border, the hurricane knocked down more than 100 towers holding high-voltage transmission lines, damaged 272 substations and flooded the Sabine Power Station in Bridge City, driving snakes and wild animals into the plant, officials at Entergy Texas said.
-snip-
A former Texas governor, Mr. Bush took a rapid helicopter tour of the devastated areas around Galveston, then jetted back to Washington to meet with economic advisers about a different sort of storm on Wall Street.
------------------------------------------