Hurricane Ike Churns Towards Texas Coast
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And hello again, everyone. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Tony Harris. See developments on Hurricane Ike come in to the NEWSROOM live all day. Here is what's on the rundown. Bull's eye on Galveston. The Texas city already taking on water, and Ike still a half-day from landfall. Around a million people urged to hit the road. A dire warning of certain death -- of certain death for people who remain in Galveston. Gas prices shooting up as Ike stalks the Gulf. Big worries about damage to the oil industry today, Friday, September 12th, in the CNN NEWSROOM. OK. Monster Hurricane Ike churns toward the Texas coast. Folks gassing up to get the heck out of town with mandatory evacuations under way. Waves crashing over the seawalls already, with promises of widespread massive damage. A Category 2 storm expected to be 3 when it hits tonight. We will hear from meteorologist Jacqui Jeras in just a moment. But first, we have got CNN reporters and correspondents posted in all of the hotspots. Rob Marciano is in Galveston, which is expected to take a direct hit. Sean Callebs is in Houston, and Ali Velshi in Baytown, where the nation's largest oil refineries are at risk. All right. People in Houston were warned. For those not evacuating, they're being warned to batten down the hatches. The city could experience hurricane-force winds for 10 bruising hours. CNN's Sean Callebs is in the nation's fourth largest city. Sean, good afternoon. Good day to you.</s>SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good day, Tony. If you look behind me, this is Interstate 45. This is where basically Galveston and everywhere in between, people who wanted to evacuate, those mandatory evacuations, are going to be coming through this interstate. Not too crowded right now. And the city says that's pretty good news, because they believe all the mandatory evacuations for people in those areas who decided to get out got out ahead of time, and so you don't see the gridlock like you saw three years ago during Hurricane Rita. We talked about those punishing winds that this area is going to have to endure for up to 12 hours, is what we're hearing from emergency management officials. And if you look behind me at the skyline, think of the damage 100 mile-an-hour winds could do to some of these tall buildings, blowing glass all over the place. Well, the time has run out for people in communities who have special needs. The city was sending buses into those areas to get people out. Well, they just had the cutoff time in the last few minutes. So those buses are done. Special needs people, if they didn't get out, at this point they're on their own. And the significance of that, Tony, the police and ambulances say they will stop running once sustained winds of 30 miles an hour begin hitting this city. And it really comes down to the location in Houston. There's a big shipping channel that leads right up through here, and the major concern is Ike is just going to blow right up through there, with a massive storm surge, and just inundate large areas. And there's nothing anybody can do at this point. They can't stop the roofs from blowing off houses, they can't stop the surge. All they can do is get people out ahead of time. Let's hope they do that, because one final thing here, Tony, once these winds do get tropical storm force, they're going to close the interstate and keep people off the interstates.</s>HARRIS: OK. Sean Callebs heading us on our path from Houston. Sean, appreciate it. Thank you. And just where you don't want to be, in the middle of the Gulf. Word this morning a freighter with 22 people aboard is adrift 90 miles south of Galveston. The Coast Guard says winds from Ike are getting too strong to launch a helicopter rescue mission. Instead, the Coast Guard says letting the storm push the freighter into shallow water may be the best course. Going into shallow water would allow the ship to drop anchor and secure itself. Well, we hope for the best there. What's so incredible is Ike is 900 miles across, just filling up the Gulf of Mexico, what, maybe 40 percent? The biggest issue, of course, storm surge, and Galveston will get it first. And that's where we find CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano. And Rob, you know, people who are staying, and it seems it is a considerable number, seemingly are counting on the strength of the structures therein to protect them?</s>ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, not only the strength of the structure, Tony, but the height is going to be a huge issue, as you know. The storm surge, a huge concern</s>HARRIS: Boy.</s>MARCIANO: And spray and flooding continues to pile up on that seawall. Down the block from here, or down the boulevard from here, we're getting reports of flooding in some of the less protected areas. And you can believe that as the storm surge approaches later on tonight and tomorrow, the full fury of it, at least, what's not protected by this seawall will be inundated with water. Even with the protection of the seawall, Tony, if we get a 15-to-20-foot surge, that's not going to do a whole lot of good either. The local authorities have issued a curfew beginning 8:00 tonight, good until 5:00 a.m. Sunday. This will be strictly enforced. Those who do stay to ride out the storm...</s>HARRIS: OK. We're losing the microphone that Rob is using right now. Rob Marciano is right there in the direct path of the storm, right there in Galveston, Texas. And we ask you to bear with us. There's no question about the fact that we will have some interruptions in our transmission lines as our people are right there in the line, in the path of this storm. Let's get the numbers now, the coordinates on Ike.</s>HARRIS: You know, we were asking a lot of you, our iReporters, today a couple of areas we would like to get some submissions, Josh.</s>JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.</s>HARRIS: First of all, we would like to get first-person accounts and obviously pictures of folks who have decided to evacuate, maybe who are running into supply shortages, and shortages, supply shortages in terms of getting gas to get away from the storm. But also, folks who have decided to try to ride this storm out in, say, Galveston and the Houston area. If you would, turn that camera around, grab that cell phone, and turn that camera on and send us those first-person submissions. We'd love to have them. And I know you've got some now, Josh.</s>LEVS: And don't -- obviously, do not be in any dangerous at all for any reason, especially on our account. Before we show anything on the air, we call people, screen them, make sure no dangers were taken. Tony, this thing behind me is a map. Let's close in on this map for a second. I want you to see this because I keep refreshing it. These are some of the latest iReports we're getting. And as you can see, it's throughout the Gulf region, and it keeps coming to us. Some of the most powerful ones are over on the Florida side. I want to start off with this video. Look at that. That is powerful. We got that. And Max (ph) is telling us that when he was out at the beach yesterday -- this is over in Pensacola Beach area -- that he was seeing these people who were trying to take down this flagpole, because they were concerned that it could ultimately become a projectile. So safety workers were out there working on it. Let's go to some photos we've also gotten, and this is also from that same general area, on the Florida side. These come to us from -- who are these coming -- James Amerson (ph). And some of these are amazing. You can feel the gushing as you're looking at these pictures. And he tells us -- we spoke with him -- he tells us these are some of the strongest surges he has seen at least in years. And you can see the power of what's going on there. Again, he didn't go to any dangers to take these pictures. They were taken throughout late yesterday. But obviously more and more people are now going to be affected by this. And we were just talking with Jacqui earlier about how that stretch of Florida really has been hit.</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>LEVS: These are the best pictures I've seen from anyone at all. The best pictures I've seen to bring us to the scene have been from ireport.com. Let me just give you a sense of how quickly they're coming in. Look at this. I mean, I keep refreshing this screen, and these are pictures that we're getting from the area, throughout the area. And this is all over the Gulf Coast and, again, no one's going into danger,. But we piece through these, we share them with you on the air. And we do encourage you, send them along. And we're going to keep throughout this afternoon coming along here, showing you the videos, the photos we're getting, and the stories, because this is obviously, Tony, the story of the day. That's what we got.</s>HARRIS: When you hear one, two, three meteorologists that I can think of on our air talking about, hey, I've never seen anything quite like this, can you imagine what's yet to come throughout this day? We'll be keeping an eye on it, obviously, and encouraging your iReports. Again, as Josh mentioned, please, be safe. Thanks, Josh.</s>LEVS: You got it. Thanks, Tony.</s>HARRIS: We'll turn our attention back to Houston here in a moment, the heartbeat of the oil and gas industries. And right now, in Ike's bull's eye. Will storm hit you at the gas pump?