Hurricane Ike clobbers Texas

Hurricane Ike barreled through Texas last week, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and leaving nearly 2 million people in Houston and elsewhere without power and thousands short of food, water, and gasoline. Nearly 2,000 people needed to be rescued from Gulf Coast towns after they ignored evacuation orders. At least 17 people died in Texas alone, and authorities said financial losses could be as high as $18 billion. “I’m so sad for all those families,” said Coast Guard rescuer Kyle Chapman, surveying the damage over Galveston Island. “All those homes gone—just disappeared.”

The hurricane also pummeled Bolivar Peninsula, near the Louisiana border, bringing 110-mph winds and a 15-foot storm surge before traveling north, eventually bringing storms and flooding this week to the Ohio Valley. On the 27-mile peninsula, houses were scattered and debris was strewn across land and water. In Galveston, beach homes were destroyed while remnants of boats and cars and even cow carcasses clogged streets and waterways. Local officials estimated that half the city’s tax base had been swept away.

It’s bad enough to endure a hurricane, said the Houston Chronicle in an editorial. Now we have to suffer through another controversy over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. After inexcusable delays in the delivery of provisions to relief workers and victims, “federal and Texas officials blamed each other.” But while there may have been some missteps, FEMA has clearly learned some lessons since the Katrina debacle; “nothing like FEMA’s failure in New Orleans occurred in Southeast Texas.”

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Indeed, a lot of things went right, said The Austin-American Statesman. The storm was truly devastating and “some parts of the coast will never be the same.” Yet, considering the “enormous destruction caused by Ike,” the fact that casualties were so low shows that we’ve all come a long way since Katrina. “The calls for early evacuation from the hurricane’s path certainly saved lives.”

Officials rose to the occasion, said Rod Dreher in Dallasnews.com, but many citizens did not. “Despite pleas from authorities to get the hell out,” hundreds of Galveston “knotheads” foolishly chose to ride out the storm. “People who take stupid chances and then depend on cops, firefighters, Coast Guardsmen, and others to risk their lives to save them ought to be ashamed of themselves.”