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Power companies continued restoring electricity to customers in and around Houston Saturday, yet by the end of the day more than a million homes and businesses remained in the dark. Progress was slow as the companies began the tedious task of renewing power to one block or one house at a time after completing key infrastructure repairs in recent days. Even so, three of the four major power companies serving the area reported gains, while the other did not release updated figures Saturday. The word comes a full week after Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas coast and cut a...

GALVESTON, Texas — It's been nearly a week since Hurricane Ike bulled ashore, and the images of once-bustling coastal Texas communities reduced to only a faint shadow of their old selves are no less staggering. Survivors traipsing past debris piled higher than their heads. Loose livestock grazing beneath downed power lines. Before-and-after shots of whole neighborhoods washed away. Scores of people taking on the drudgery of making it all livable again for weary and anxious evacuees still waiting to come home.

FORT MORGAN, Ala. , Texas — When the waves from Hurricane Ike receded, they left behind a mystery — a ragged shipwreck that archeologists say could be a two-masted Civil War schooner that ran aground in 1862 or another ship from some 70 years later. The wreck, about six miles from Fort Morgan, had already been partially uncovered when Hurricane Camille cleared away sand in 1969. Researchers at the time identified it as the Monticello, a battleship that partially burned when it crashed trying to get past the U.S. Navy and into Mobile Bay during the Civil War.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- At least 49 offshore oil platforms, all with production of less than 1,000 barrels a day, were destroyed by Hurricane Ike as it raced across the Gulf of Mexico, and some may not be rebuilt, the Interior Department said Thursday. It said in the latest hurricane damage assessment that the platforms altogether accounted for 13,000 barrels of oil and 84 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. There are more than 3,800 production platforms in the Gulf producing 1.3 million barrels of oil and 7 billion cubic feet of gas each day. Most remain shut down.

Major oil companies are expecting to get back to normal in the Gulf Coast region following Hurricane Ike's fury as more gas stations open and the post-Ike demand starts to wane. ... Shell Oil Co. reported that 70 percent of its company-branded stations were open in Houston and Beaumont - more than 360 of the total. Valero Energy opened nearly 20 more for a total of 109 and more than 60 percent of the region's Chevron stations were back in business. `... Meanwhile, power was restored Thursday to several more of the 14 refineries that shut down before Ike slammed...

The short - but eventful - life of IkeIn its brief lifespan of only 13 days, Hurricane Ike wreaked great deal of havoc. Affecting several countries including Cuba, Haiti, and the United States, Ike is blamed for approximately 114 deaths (74 in Haiti alone), and damages that are still being tallied, with estimates topping $10 billion. Many shoreline communities of Galveston, Texas were wiped from the map by the winds, storm surge and the walls of debris pushed along by Ike - though Galveston was spared the level of disaster it suffered in 1900. (28 photos total)   Some amazing...

With no idea of numbers, authorities say final accounting may take years GALVESTON, Texas - The death toll from Hurricane Ike is remarkably low so far, considering that legions of people stayed behind as the storm obliterated row after row of homes along the Texas coast. But officials suspect there are more victims out there and say some might simply have been swept out to sea. Exactly how many is anybody's guess, because authorities had no sure way to track those who defied evacuation orders. And the number of people reported missing after the storm, whose death toll stands at...

Hundreds of people whose beachfront homes were wrecked by Hurricane Ike may be barred from rebuilding under a little-noticed Texas law. And even those whose houses were spared could end up seeing them condemned by the state. Now here's the saltwater in the wound: It could be a year before the state tells these homeowners what they mayormay not do. Worse, if these homeowners do lose their beachfront property, they may get nothing in compensation from the state. The reason: A 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average...

HAVANA, September 17 —In less than 24 hours more than 1,000 intellectuals from Latin America, the United States, Europe and Africa have signed an appeal circulated by their Cuban colleagues, expressing solidarity and demanding an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba. The message, which is circulating on the Internet, notes that Cuba was dramatically impacted by two powerful hurricanes recently, and that its people are demanding an immediate halt to the odious blockade that has been maintained against Cuba by successive U.S. administrations for almost 50 years. The appeal to the world from a large group of Cuban artists...

CenterPoint Energy executives issued a timeline for power restoration, indicating it will be after Monday before most lights shine in a huge swath of the Houston area from Spring to Pearland to Baytown. CenterPoint reported Wednesday it had restored power to 42 percent of its 2.2 million customers. Entergy, which serves areas in the northern and eastern portions of the region struck by Ike, had restored 18 percent of its 395,000 customers. And Texas-New Mexico Power Co., which serves coast communities including Angleton and Texas City, reported 58 percent of its 113,000 customers had power.

Excerpt - A part of the current problems with recovery from the ravages of Hurricane Ike is that the city of Galveston’s part-time, unpaid mayor has virtually all the power in the city. The person who runs the city every other day, the city manager, is secondary. That’s backwards, and it gets in the way of effective government in the face of dangerous community crisis. The person in charge in an emergency should be the person who has hiring and firing authority over city department heads. That person is Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc, and Galveston would be better off...

ORANGE, Texas (AP) - Hurricane Katrina chased bluesman Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown from his adopted home in New Orleans to his hometown here on the Texas Gulf Coast, where he died in exile. Now, another hurricane has disturbed his rest. The 1982 Grammy Award winner's casket was one of dozens belched up by the ground when gulf and rain waters from Hurricane Ike flooded Hollywood Cemetery, an all-black burial ground on the west side of this city on the Sabine River. ... The top of Brown's vault had popped off, and his bronze casket had floated away. But three jars of...

Earnestine Maxie and Alicia Brown each worked multiple jobs back home near the Gulf Coast. Ricky Freeland and Jim Swift have jobs waiting on them, but neither has a car. They are among more than one dozen coastal residents who have camped out since Thursday at Mobberly Baptist Church. Many have learned that their homes are damaged and without power because of Hurricane Ike or that they're not being allowed back into their hometowns. Other than Brown, none of them have seen how much damage has been done to their homes. Finding local jobs is foremost on their minds, though...

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - 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. ~snip~ The Texas attorney general's office is trying to figure out how legally to force the holdouts to leave... ~snip~

Locations index for photo pairs of Bolivar Peninsula, TX. Green line represents the storm track of Hurricane Ike. Location 1: Oblique aerial photography of Bolivar Peninsula, TX, on September 9, 2008 (top) and September 15, 2008, two days after landfall of Hurricane Ike (bottom). Yellow arrows mark features that appear in each image. In addition to the loss of houses, the evidence of inundation here includes eroded dune face and sand deposited well inland of the shoreline. Location 2: Oblique aerial photography of Bolivar Peninsula, TX, on September 9, 2008 (top) and September 15, 2008, two days after landfall of...

MMS Reports 28 Platforms Destroyed by Ike MMS Tuesday, September 16, 2008 Minerals Management Service (MMS) reports that as of September 15, 2008, 28 of the 3,800 offshore oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have been destroyed by Hurricane Ike. Several other platforms have been reported as significantly damaged; information on those facilities is being compiled and will be released in the near term. Initial estimates are that the destroyed production platforms produced a total of 11,000 barrels of oil per day and 82 million cubic feet of gas per day. (See table below.) The damage...

GALVESTON, Texas -- A legendary Galveston nightclub and former dance hall that jetted out above the Gulf of Mexico was destroyed by the massive storm surge of Hurricane Ike, KPRC Local 2 reported Saturday. The Balinese Room, located at 2108 Seawall Blvd., was ripped apart when Ike came ashore. The decades-old Balinese Room was a famous, recognizable landmark that extended 600 feet from Seawall Boulevard at 21st Street into the Gulf of Mexico

HOUSTON (BP)--About 1,500 Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers are setting up units in Texas and were expected to be operational by the end of the day Tuesday to serve victims of Hurricane Ike. The primary focus of the efforts currently is food preparation, with 39 kitchen units on site in the state. The American Red Cross has asked Southern Baptists to be ready to prepare up to 375,000 hot meals a day, while the Salvation Army has requested 125,000 meals a day, bringing the total to 500,000. In addition to the 39 feeding units, more than 40 other types of...

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - The few hundred holdouts on Texas' ravaged Bolivar Peninsula will be required to leave in the next few days, and officials said Tuesday they are ready to use emergency powers to empty the barrier island scraped clean by Hurricane Ike.(Tex A.G. looking at legal options)

Gasoline stations throughout the Southeast and are reporting sporadic shortages and price spikes as the surge in average pump prices leveled off at $3.854 a gallon. The Sheetz convenience store chain reported supplies will be tight for several days at some of its outlets following the disruption caused by Hurricane Ike. The Altoona, Pennsylvania retailer reported that 25 to 30 Sheetz outlets in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia are out of gas because of the closure late last week of the Colonial Pipeline from the Gulf Coast. The American Automobile Association (AAA) reported that the pipeline has restarted both its...