Hurricane Ike -All safe!

[AllAmericanPUP]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/0...xas/index.html

Weather service warns of 'certain death' in face of Ike
Sept. 12, 2008
8:15 am

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Residents along Galveston Bay in Texas "face certain death" if they don't leave home before Hurricane Ike roars ashore, the National Weather Service warns.

Rarely do forecasters use such forceful language.

The last time they did was three years ago as Hurricane Katrina closed in on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Forecasters expect Ike, a Category 2 storm, to strengthen before its center makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday. The storm is so big that it fills most of the Gulf of Mexico.

Roughly 3.5 million people live in the storm's impact zone, according to federal estimates.

The weather service painted a vivid picture in its warning of the destruction it expects: a towering wall of water, possibly up to 22 feet high, crashing over the Galveston Bay shoreline as the brunt of Ike comes ashore. That wall of water could send floodwaters surging into Houston, more than 20 miles inland.

"All neighborhoods ... and possibly entire coastal communities ... will be inundated during the peak storm tide," the weather service warned. "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one- or two-story homes will face certain death."....



....Still, not everyone was heeding the weather service warnings.

"I've decided not to evacuate," said iReporter Matteu Erchull on Galveston Island. "We have a lot of faith in the seawall, and we have boards on the windows. Most people on the island live on second or third stories, so they don't have to worry about the water so much.

"The actual stores down here ran out of sand so we took some ice bags and filled them with sand from the beach," he said....

I was in Hurricane Camille in 1969...in the process of getting the heck out and still got hit by her. It was like being in an F-5 tornado that would not stop!!

[Scooter's Mom]

My brother and his girls are in San Antonio.
The service my granny signed on with never picked her up. But we didn't know that until everyone was gone.

She's 84, can barely walk and is ALONE in a fairly flood prone area...
I am beside myself with worry. Please, please... say a prayer for my granny.

She is very religious. She says she is comfortable with the fact that she is at her house... I've been crying all night. Nobody can go get her now, and I'm 1200 miles away. Her name is Juanita.