From CBS News:
About 250 people who withstood Hurricane Ike on a coastal sliver of land will be forced off it so crews can begin the recovery effort, authorities said Tuesday, vowing to invoke emergency powers to make it happen. The Texas attorney general’s office is trying to figure out how legally to force the holdouts to leave, [County Judge Jim] Yarbrough said. Local authorities are prepared to do whatever it takes to get residents to a safer place.
That’s going to go over really well. One bad effect of the cool temperatures we’re having is that people aren’t being forced out of those areas for lack of air conditioning. Ninety degrees and high humidity are no fun.
Meanwhile, Galveston’s mayor has come to her senses. Sounds like she was browbeaten into recognizing her stupidity by the state of Texas. From the Chronicle:
As companies worked to restore electricity to the region, Galveston worked to restore order by suspending its ‘Look and Leave’ program for Galveston Island, indefinitely, effective immediately, officials said this evening.
Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas initiated the program at noon today, but had to suspend it less than six hours later.
Earlier today, thousands of evacuees, apparently responding to a “look and leave” policy announced by Galveston officials, created a huge traffic jam that was blocking emergency vehicles and badly needed supplies from reaching the island, state transportation officials said.
(Update: the traffic jam hit 8 miles at one point.)
White and Emmett are working together to take control of the FEMA relief efforts after some glitches. I’m really undecided about this. The NIMS training I mentioned earlier makes a big deal about having a unified regional command, and speaking with one voice, but one of the things I’ve noticed is that it runs headlong into local politicians who must have their Moment in the Sun, Looking Decisive and Caring. Still, if it’s not working, it’s not working. Local politicians know the area better, and have already developed working relationships with many companies and key persons. Assuming they’re not named Ray Nagin, the locals are in a better position to get things done. I am rather disturbed about the Mayor’s tendency to demand other people make heads roll. In general, such behavior tends to cause folks you may need in the very near future to make notes about you like, “Doesn’t play well with others.” And it also sets you up for reciprocal demands. Bill might not want to lash out so much at perceived errors.
I have to say though, 200 trucks sitting in Reliant’s parking lot while some centers go unstocked sounds just a bit screwed up. There should be one person in charge of marshaling the yard (“Ice trucks over here, food over there, volunteer parking here, this corner for our own supplies. Trucks to enter here, x number of people to direct them…”), one to head up the effort to inventory what’s available, whats on the way, and what’s dispatched; one to handle logistics for the volunteers and trucks (fuel, etc.) If the feds can’t supply someone who can work that out, they really do have problems. (Granted, doing it on the fly, from a standing start is not a trivial task. That’s where the NIMS training is supposed to come in.)
Meanwhile, up to half of the five million people toiling without electricity in Houston may still be in the dark next Tuesday, according to predictive models used by the region’s largest utility company, a spokesman announced this evening.
Floyd LeBlanc, vice president of communications for CenterPoint Energy, said the company has restored power to 690,000 of its 2.2 million customers. But by next Tuesday, between 550,000 and 1.1 million will still be without power, he said.
“We still have a lot of work ahead of us,” he said. “We’re working around the clock.”
In short, they’ve gotten the easy stuff; now it gets hard. And hard takes longer.
Meanwhile, people are still finding stupid ways to die, long after Ike is gone:
In other news, two men found inside a southwest Houston mobile home are among 10 in the area whose deaths have been linked to Hurricane Ike, Harris County medical examiners said.
Francisco Garcia, 20 and German Rojas, 32, were discovered about 2:30 p.m. Monday when a relative came to check on them in their trailer in a mobile home park along the 14100 block of Del Papa, Houston police said.
Both men died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a gas-powered generator found in the kitchen, authorities said.
Internal combustion and enclosed spaces don’t mix.
That’s all for now.
(edited for clarity)