WORLD> America
Hurricane Ike grows as it closes in on Texas
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-13 09:07

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5 million prepackaged meals were being sent to the region, along with more than 230 generators and 5.6 million liters of water. At least 3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana.


Debris brought ashore by waves created by Hurricane Ike lay on the road atop the sea wall in Galveston, Texas, Friday, Sept. 12, 2008. Ike's eye was forecast to strike somewhere near Galveston late Friday or early Saturday then head inland for Houston. [Agencies]

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday asked President Bush for a "wide-reaching emergency declaration" in all 88 counties being affected. Perry said this declaration would ensure 100 percent reimbursement for all storm-related costs.

In Houston, authorities instructed most of the city's 2 million residents to just hunker down to avoid highway gridlock.

Still, authorities warned that the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston, the nation's second-busiest port -- an economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products.

The oil and gas industry was also closely watching Ike because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages.

The storm could also force water up the seven bayous that thread through Houston, swamping neighborhoods so flood-prone that they get inundated during ordinary rainstorms.

Bachir Annane, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division, said Ike's surge could be catastrophic, and like nothing the Texas coast has ever seen.

"Wind doesn't tell the whole story," Annane said. "It's the size that tells the story, and this is a giant."

Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a US metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane.