Bush warns on hurricane recovery

US President George W Bush has warned Texas will take a long time to recover from Hurricane Ike, as a huge search and relief operation gathers pace.

Mr Bush will travel to the state on Tuesday to inspect the relief effort.

Rescuers are trying to get to thousands of people who ignored orders to flee the storm, which cut power to millions and mauled America’s oil hub.

“This is a tough storm and it’s one that is going to require time for people to recover,” Mr Bush said.

Ike has been blamed for four deaths so far, two in Texas and two in Louisiana.

What’s really frustrating is that we can’t get to them Tommie Mafrei Galveston police chief

Rescuers are using boats, lorries and helicopters to tackle roads waist-deep in water and blocked by felled trees.The storm made landfall in Galveston early on Saturday with 110mph (175km/h) winds.

It cut a 500-mile (800-km) swathe of destruction across a span of the Gulf of Mexico coast before weakening to a tropical depression on Sunday morning over Arkansas.

Ike severely hit oil and gas production in the region and wreaked at least $8bn (£4.5bn) in onshore damage.

Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison warned that oil refineries disabled by the hurricane could remain idled for a further eight or nine days – and that Americans should brace for possible fuel shortages.

Some coastal residents waded through chest-deep water with their belongings and children in their arms to get to safety on Saturday, but thousands of others ignored evacuation orders.

Mr Bush said the federal government would be delivering 1.5m liters of water and 1m meals daily for the displaced.

Distress calls

Police, paramedics, rescue dogs and structural engineers fanned out at daybreak on Sunday across the coastal city of Galveston, which took the brunt of the storm, hampered by floodwater’s and widespread wreckage.

Galveston police officer Tommie Mafrei said: “What’s really frustrating is that we can’t get to [the stranded]… They are naive about it, thinking it’s not going to be that bad.”

State Governor Rick Perry’s office said 940 people had been rescued by nightfall on Saturday, but that thousands had made distress calls the night before.

Hurricane Ike caused widespread destruction in Galveston, Texas

Officials said another 600 people were rescued in neighboring Louisiana, where flooding ruined tens of thousands of homes and left nearly 200,000 householders without electricity.

More than three million people had no power in Texas at the height of the storm, and the authorities said it could be weeks before supplies were fully restored.

Ike sent fuel prices higher at the pumps and, analysts say, has triggered the biggest disruption to US energy supplies in at least three years.

Production was shut down at 14 oil refineries and 28 natural gas processing plants in the storm’s path.

The hurricane also battered Houston, the fourth-largest city in the US and the nation’s oil hub. Police there had used bullhorns to order people back into their homes.

The BBC’s Rajesh Mirchandani weathered the storm in Houston and described how ferocious winds ripped the glass from many of the city’s skyscrapers.

But officials were encouraged by the fact flooding brought by the storm surge turned out to be much less serious than forecast.

Among those killed by Ike were a woman in Pinehurst, Texas, and a teenage boy in Louisiana’s Bayou Dularge, AP news agency reported.

Last week, Ike caused devastation in Cuba and Haiti, where hundreds of people have died in several tropical storms over the last month.

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Evacuations as Ike approaches US

Residents in the US state of Texas have begun to evacuate as Hurricane Ike churns through the Gulf of Mexico.

About one million people have been advised to leave their homes, and the authorities have laid on more than 1,000 buses to facilitate the exodus.

Meteorologists warned Ike could develop into a major hurricane before hitting the Texas coast late on Friday.

Ike has killed more than 70 people in the Caribbean, with Haiti and Cuba particularly badly hit.

The US has pledged $10m (£5.7m) in aid to Haiti, where the UN estimates 800,000 people are in temporary shelters.

And Washington offered $100,000 in initial aid to Cuba, whose government has been subject to a US trade embargo for four decades.

Cuba turned the offer down, asking instead that the US sells it supplies on credit.

Supplies hit

People have been boarding up their property in Galveston, Texas

National Hurricane Center (NHC) projections show Ike reaching the US coast by late on Friday, but say the storm’s path could veer.They say Texas could be lashed with 130mph (208km/h) winds and a 20ft (6m) storm surge above normal tide levels as the storm approaches the coast.

NHC warned that because the storm is so large, weather along the coast is expected to deteriorate long before it hits land.

Tropical storm force winds currently extend up to 275 miles (445KM) from the Ike’s center.

Almost all energy production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut down as a precaution, but the US department of energy said the storm was expected to miss most of the installations.

At 1500 GMT forecasters said the eye of the storm was about 470 miles (760km) east of Galveston on the Texas coast, moving at about 10mph (17 km/h).

The mayor of Galveston, Lyda Ann Thomas, has issued a mandatory evacuation order for the city and said no shelters will be opened.

“Those who stay here and don’t voluntary evacuate, we are asking to simply stay at home,” she said.

The city is providing 75 buses to transport city resident to the state capital, Austin.

Several other counties along the coast have announced mandatory or voluntary evacuations.

‘Buses, not body bags’

Hurricane Ike’s projected path

The authorities have begun moving weak and chronically-ill hospital patients to San Antonio, about 190 miles from Houston.Texans described businesses being boarded up and residents taking to the roads en masse.

“Probably every mobile home in the state was on the road,” said Margaret Romero, a 67-year-old from Corpus Christi.

“Every house on our street was boarded up,” she told Reuters.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who organized 1,350 buses to help residents leave, said he believed some were likely to resist evacuation calls but added that he wanted to see “buses, not body bags”.

Earlier, President George W Bush had declared a federal emergency in Texas, allowing funds to be freed to help the state deal with the storm.

Aid appeal

Ike is currently a Category Two storm, with winds of 100mph, but forecasters say it is likely to strengthen on its way through the Gulf of Mexico.

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In Cuba, the storm killed four people, wrecked tens of thousands of buildings and destroyed crops.The UN estimates the cost of the damage at between $3bn-$4bn.

The island nation was already reeling from the impact of Hurricane Gustav, which destroyed about 100,000 homes when it hit the island at the end of August.

Ike earlier caused 66 deaths in Haiti and reportedly damaged 80% of the homes in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, has endured the onslaught of four tropical storms in a three-week period, causing more than 550 deaths.

The UN has appealed for more than $100m in international aid to assist Haiti, where most people already lived on less than a dollar a day.