Ike leaves trail of debris

Hurricane Ike swept across Houston early on Saturday morning local time, leaving a trail of debris and damage but proving far less catastrophic than had been feared.

Mei Preimesberger did not bother to get up when the storm was lashing America's fourth-largest city, but her husband Lee stayed up all night keeping watch over the family home.

When Mei, a Chinese-American, woke in the morning, she found that some shingles on her roof had been blown away and her yard was covered with twigs, branches and all kinds of debris.

Her next-door neighbor was less fortunate: the yard looked like a pond and a whole section of their fence was gone.

Citywide, many areas were flooded. By Saturday night, some 1,000 stranded people had been rescued.

Galveston, about one hour's drive from downtown Houston, bore the brunt of Ike's assault.

The storm came ashore on this island town of 57,000, sparking short-circuit-induced fires that burned down 10 buildings and wrecked seven others, submerging a huge portion of the island and making it inaccessible to rescuers as late as Saturday evening.

The Preimesbergers did not evacuate mainly because of their bad memories of Hurricane Rita in 2005. The scare of Rita, right after the disaster in New Orleans, and poor planning caused more damage - and anguish - than the storm itself, which shifted its trajectory after landfall.

This time, 140,000 people defied mandatory evacuation orders and stayed home while 2.5 million residents along the Texas and Louisiana coast chose to flee, according to local reports.

So far, less than 10 hurricane-related fatalities have been reported, but the number is likely to rise.

About 80 percent of Houston suffered from power outages.

The Preimesbergers, living on the west side of town, were lucky to have dodged the power outage.

Houston is a major oil refinery center in the US.

Even though the eye of the hurricane missed the refineries, nobody can tell when they'll be back in operation. As a result, gas prices have seen an uptick against a backdrop of prices easing on international markets.

"It could have been so much worse," Mei told China Daily. "But I guess to those who lost their homes or are stuck in hot, dark and flooded homes without food or necessary supplies, it's pretty bad already."

(China Daily 09/15/2008 page8)