What's going on down in Texas?

[gldstwmn]

http://galvestondailynews.com/story....8628c780c2a319

Galveston officials begin to restrict media access

By Rhiannon Meyers
The Daily News
Published September 15, 2008

GALVESTON — Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas on Monday ordered all city employees not to talk to news reporters. She did not say when that order would be lifted.

Thomas and City Manager Steve LeBlanc will be the only officials allowed to talk to reporters.

City spokeswoman Mary Jo Naschke vehemently denied the city was trying to clamp down on news coverage.

She said emergency personnel and city employees were too busy to talk to reporters. Naschke also said the city had been accommodating news reporters by allowing them access to the island when others weren't allowed, giving them escorted rides to damaged areas and allowing them to move about outside during a curfew.

But at a noon press conference on Monday, Thomas and LeBlanc talked for less than 30 minutes and refused to answer any more than five questions. Thomas said she would try to hold another press conference Tuesday.

Daily News reporters who tried to speak to city employees at rescue sites were denied information and told no one was authorized to talk to them except for the mayor and city manager.

"It's the worst thing the city could do. Those who will suffer most are evacuees," Publisher Dolph Tillotson said in statement via text message from the island. "The media will have to turn to other sources that might be less reliable. I can't imagine a dumber move under these extreme circumstances."

Before the press conference started Monday, LeBlanc asked reporters whether he could go off the record. Some television crews agreed and turned their cameras off. LeBlanc then asked news crews to urge their bosses and managers to show more coverage of the island on television because evacuees didn't care about what was happening in Houston.

All reporters who were staying at the city's emergency operations center, stationed at the San Luis Hotel, were asked to leave Monday. San Luis hotel owner Tilman Fertitta was housing reporters at the nearby Hilton Hotel, which he also owns.

Reporters would be allowed on the island, but only if they had proper identification, Thomas said. She didn't clarify what that meant.

Reporters were also forbidden from visiting areas on the far West End of FM 3005, Thomas said. She did not explain why.

[belladonna.]

uh, that sounds a little scary. what the hell?

[steviefan59]

hey guys...as u know, if u read the thread i posted in this forum, arlene (steviefan49) lives in houston...i talked to her last late on sunday nite as that was when she was able to get a signal and she told me they were not able to even use cell phones during the day as fema has taken over...the mess as far as i can tell is that ppl were told to evacuate galveston and galveston island and some reports said 20,000 to 200,000 refused to leave and now they're spending all their resources trying to get these ppl out instead of restoring power and working on infrastructure...the reporters are only trying to tell the rest of the world exactly what is happening and that's all...hugs pat

[SuzeQuze]

I suspect these officials don't want all their blundering reported and recorded.

[gldstwmn]

Lots of information and photos here. It looks as though some of these places were completely wiped out:

http://jakeabby.com/cb/

[ajmccarrell]

It's because BushMcCainPalinCheney CAUSED the hurricane, BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

[Lee]

Thanks for posting the pics. That is really sad. I hope the people got out, but I'm sure some stayed & are probably missing. That's weird how some houses are still there & some are completely gone. And I wonder if the flood waters will ever recede or will this be how it is permanently. Well, I was thinking about sending a check to the Red Cross & now I definitely am. I watched all day when the hurricane hit, hoping it wouldn't be that bad, but I'm sorry to see that it was.

Lee

[gldstwmn]

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20...WS01/809150284

Former Tylerites Braved the Storm in Galveston, Houston

The following is a first-hand account of the destruction of Galveston Island by Hurricane Ike by Mark Collette, former Tyler Paper reporter, who lives there with his wife, Rhiannon Meyers, also a former Tyler Paper reporter and now a reporter for the Galveston County Daily News.


Collette sent an e-mail, from which this information was included, to let friends and family know they are doing fine.




The island, as a whole, looks like a war zone. The structures that weren’t destroyed have been ruined by water. Fire destroyed at least 17 buildings. One entire apartment building collapsed.


Every structure built over the water in front of the Seawall was destroyed and left little trace, except for the Flagship Hotel, which was severely damaged and separated from the island.

Some people are believed to still be inside but cannot be reached immediately because the pilings on the building were damaged, so a helicopter can’t land on top.

Much if not most of the property on the Bolivar Peninsula is now debris. Homes on the West End of Galveston Island that used to be behind the dunes are now over open water. The Seawall was covered in chunks of concrete that weigh hundreds of pounds.

Authorities are still in search-and-rescue mode. About 24,000 people didn’t heed evacuation orders. Rescuers are leaving the dead in houses and moving on to look for the living.

Unlike in New Orleans after Katrina, they are not spray painting a giant "X" on a building when they find bodies. Instead, they are putting discrete stickers on the buildings. On the one hand, government officials seem to be trying to keep the media from portraying the true extent of the disaster, but on the other hand officers are tipping off reporters about deaths and rescues.

Rhiannon said the amount of buildings reduced to rubble suggests that more bodies will be found and the magnitude of the disaster will become clearer in the coming days.

A couple thousand have probably been rescued, a couple thousand have left the island on buses since the storm. Thankfully, for those who remain, the government has arrived with food, water and ice, and the weather has cooled so that people can stay comfortable just with open windows.

Rhiannon said those now choosing to remain on the island are mostly poor, homeless, sick and/or elderly. One guy on Bolivar refused to leave because rescuers refused to accommodate his pet lion. The folks on the peninsula are a different breed.

Boats and other debris crashed into the causeway linking the island to the mainland. Construction on the new causeway was almost complete before the storm, but the southbound side was still a section or two short of reaching the mainland. Now, the lanes of the northbound side that were being used for southbound traffic are inaccessible because the road buckled in the storm.

Because of that and lack of services, it’s going to be a while before anybody is allowed back on the island. There’s talk that the city plans on letting only residents back in on Tuesday, and even then making them return to the mainland by nightfall. I doubt this will happen by Tuesday because of the ongoing search and rescue efforts.

As for our first-floor apartment (located a few blocks inland from the Seawall), there were 8 inches to a foot of water inside. This means water at street level was at least waist deep, and it also means there wasn’t any part of the island’s surface that didn’t get submerged.

The walls in our apartment that are parallel to the Seawall had watermarks as high as three feet, suggesting that waves rolled through the building somehow, even though the windows didn’t break. Rhiannon said the smell is awful. But we have renter’s insurance, and I took all the photos and most of the other keepsakes with me when I evacuated.

At the top of a fence at a school near our apartment, Rhiannon saw debris that got caught when the water was at or above the fence. That means that area was under at least 8 feet of water.

(During the hurricane) Rhiannon and about 800 other reporters, city officials and emergency workers holed up in the San Luis Resort hotel on the Seawall. The hotel is built atop an old military bunker and is probably the highest point on the island.

The storm surge never made it into the lobby, but rainwater penetrated the upper floors, drained through the walls and bubbled into the lobby, covering the floor by a few inches.

Before the wind got too strong, Rhiannon was on the 15th floor with a group of firefighters who watched fires burn around the city and were unable to do anything about it because most of the island was already under water. When the wind picked up, everyone went downstairs.

She and the rest of the newspaper staff have been resilient. The newspaper’s normal disaster plan calls for establishing a temporary copy desk in Houston while some reporters stay on the island at the Daily News, a super sturdy building with huge generators.

No one counted on water rising high enough to flood the generators. Editors were cut off from reporters, and reporters from each other, so for the first day following the storm, the reporters were basically operating on auto-pilot with very little coordination, but you wouldn’t know it from the stories they filed.

Many thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

[gldstwmn]

Link to live streaming coverage from the Houston news channels:

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


Also, I'm hearing that the line for food and water in Houston is four miles long?

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

. . . Also, I'm hearing that the line for food and water in Houston is four miles long?

Imagine if they had, say, 100 extra workers who could give their time to Houston as opposed to rescuing people who should have gotten out of Galvestion when ordered.

I also have to kind of wonder why Houston was not evacuated as well.

[estranged4life]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

It's because BushMcCainPalinCheney CAUSED the hurricane, BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Jesus did it, His RETRIBUTION because after dying on the Cross to redeem all MEN sins all he got was a lousy t-shirt.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/0...ike/index.html

Houston food bank 'overwhelmed,' director says

As President Bush arrived Tuesday to visit hurricane-damaged Houston and Galveston, thousands of people remained in shelters in Texas and more than 1.5 million customers were without power. Grocery store shelves are bare and food left in refrigerators has rotted in the absence of electricity.

The Houston Food Bank is "utterly overwhelmed with people asking for help," said its president, Brian Greene. The food bank needs 500,000 pounds of food a day for the next six weeks to satisfy the "staggering" needs of Texans who have no food or water after the storm, he said.

"People don't grasp just how many people live here," said Greene, who was executive director of New Orleans' Food Bank when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Greene lost his home in Katrina, but lived at the New Orleans food bank for weeks with only a garden hose to use as a shower. He said most of the Houston food bank's volunteers' homes were damaged and they don't have power.

"It's a very similar situation that I saw following Katrina: when the caregivers themselves [are] victims, it just becomes difficult on a far larger scale than you would think," he said. He pointed out that while Katrina's devastation was spread over a greater area, more people have been affected by Hurricane Ike.

Greene said the food bank normally distributes aid through local charities, churches and other faith-based organizations. But many were wiped out by the storm or are unable to function because of the lack of electricity or phone service. Greene said the food bank tried to hand out food at its main facility in Houston, but didn't have the capacity to handle demand.

"If you take a truck and you have some meals-ready-to-eat and water and you say, 'Look I want to give this to the people who absolutely need it the most,' you are immediately flooded with people who need it," he said.

[estranged4life]

What's going on down in Texas? I'll tell ya what's going on down in Texas...

(Chorus) "Watch dog will get you if you don't watch out
Watch dog sees and watch dog knows.
Watch keeps us on our toes
Watch dog assures you that the laws the law
No exception to the rule, watch dog ain't no fool.

Watch dog protects you, he's out on the prowl.
Guards and checks the best he can ,watch dog is a
fighting man.
Watch dog will throw, he's beam of light around
If some folks don't toe the line, watch dog's light
will shine.

(Solo) Texas has a whorehouse in it.

(Chorus) lord have mercy on our souls.

(Solo) Texas has a whorehouse in it.

(Chorus) lord have mercy on our souls.

(Solo) I'll expose the facts although it fills me with disgust
Please excuse the filthy dark details, and carnal lust.

(Chorus) Filthy dark details, and carnal lust.

(Solo) Dancing going on inside it, don't you see they gone
I inquired no one denied it, now I think I'm getting
riled
Bodies close together, arms and legs all rearranged.
And the sheriff does not close him down.
That's very strange.

(Chorus) Does not close him down ,that's very strange.

(Solo) Mean eyed juiced up brillitene honkytonk cowboys.

(Chorus) Oh no

(Solo) Mixing with green eyed thin lipped hard as nails
peroxide blonds.

(Chorus) Oh no

(Solo) Not to mention some types ,that you never guess would
venture near.
I can all depraved and loose and wild, ninety miles
from here.
And now our own Melvin P Thorp Sangers.

(Chorus) Texas has a whorehouse in it

(Solo) I'll not let this scandal fade

(Chorus) Texas has a whorehouse in it

(Solo) All uprooting , our crusade.
I can smell corruption, and I'll fight it to the top.
Loveless copulation going on.
And it must stop.

(Chorus) Stop this copulation
Stop that copulation
Loveless copulation
Stop that copulation

Texas has a whorehouse in it.
lord have mercy on our souls.
Texas has a whorehouse in it.
lord have mercy on our souls.
Watch dog smell corruption and will fight it to the top.
Loveless copulation going on, going on, going on, going
on, going on
going on.

(Solo) Don't touch that dial
This is Melvin P Thorp saying I'll be back, with new and
revealing
information about this and other cases.
Watch dog never sleeps.

(Chorus) And it must stop.
Watch dog going to get you
Going to shine his light on you
Watch dog going to get you
Going to shine his light on you."

[gldstwmn]

More pictures here:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/200...l_life_of.html

[strandinthewind]

Those pics are horrific in the destruction they show. And, this was a large, but relatively weak storm with a relatively low storm surge. Imagine what a Cat 5 with a 20 ft. surge could do.