It's 1:30 am. Just landed in Houston, home of KING's sister-station KHOU. The city and, in particular, Galveston Island to the south are in the bullseye for Hurricane Ike. KHOU is now in continuous storm coverage and we've arrived to help the staff here as they deal with covering the storm and worrying about their families. From the people I talked to at the airport to those at the local hamburger joint you can tell the anxiety and uncertainty is growing.
Tension, but not a lot of action. Since the storm has been wobbling and now some are saying, not going to be as strong, there's uncertainty about evacuating. The only mandatory evacuation orders that have been issued are for the coastal Galveston area.
Flying in I noticed there were not the long strings of red taillights of cars headed out of town as I saw when I flew through on my way through to Baton Rougue before Hurricane Rita. The freeways in town had light traffic, even the gas stations in the downtown loop area had few customers.
Most of the network and local satellite trucks on Galveston Island have just moved back from the seawall to behind the San Luis hotel - built on an old war bunker and better protected from the winds and surge that will hit them in the next 8-10 hours. We're already seeing flooding along the beach and coastal areas such as Galveston and Surfside as the storm surge rises. The current forecast is 120mph winds, a surge of over 16 feet and 10 inches of rain.
I'll blog as much as possible during the storm. as they say, stay tuned.
Leave a comment
Please read our comment rules before posting comments