Two weeks after Hurricane Ike
Two weeks after Hurricane Ike, residents of Bolivar Peninsula were finally allowed to go back on Friday to search through what remained of their homes. There is no electricity, water, sewer or phone service. Along Texas Highway 87, tents were set up offering water, ice, mosquito repellent and tetanus shots to those 4,000 residents returning under the “look and leave” policy.
Ike made landfall in Texas on September 13 and killed 27 people there. It then turned north, cutting across the nation’s midsection, killing more along the way: 8 in Louisiana; 1 in Arkansas; 4 in Missouri; 2 in Tennessee; 1 in Kentucky; 7 in Indiana; 7 in Ohio, and 1 more in Pennsylvania. More than 400 people are still missing, mostly from the Galveston area. Because their bodies have not been discovered, they are now feared dead, though the search for survivors continues.
In Ohio alone, power to almost 2 million homes and businesses was knocked out, but restored within days. In Houston, nearly a half-million people are still without power two weeks after the hurricane. Half of all the city’s traffic lights are still out. In Ohio, power to almost 2 million homes and businesses was knocked out, but restored within days. Gas supplies in Texas are still scant, and expected to worsen over the next couple weeks.
Twenty percent of Houston’s schools have been closed since the storm, but most were expected to re-open today.
Cowboys and helicopters are still trying to round up cattle that miraculously survived Ike, though some were washed as far as 20 miles from their homes. Dead cows can still be seen high up in trees where the storm surge left them in what seems a post-apocalyptic vignette.
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