page_title: Effects of Hurricane Ike in Texas
section_title: Houston
hierarchical_section_title: Effects of Hurricane Ike in Texas / Aftermath / Houston
caption_attribution_description: English: Damage to the JP Morgan Chase Tower after Hurricane Ike, Houston, Texas
context_page_description: The effects of Hurricane Ike in Texas were crippling and long-lasting. Ike's effects included deaths, widespread damage, and impacts to the price and availability of oil and gas. Hurricane Ike also had a long-term impact on the U.S. economy. Making landfall over Galveston, at 2:10 a.m. CDT on September 13, 2008, Category 2 Hurricane Ike caused extensive damage in Texas, with sustained winds of 110 mph, a 22 ft storm surge, and widespread coastal flooding.
  More than 140,000 residents in the Texas Gulf Coast danger zones in Ike's path had failed to evacuate, partly due to fears of multi-hour traffic jams as during Hurricane Rita, but over 940 were rescued from rising waters,
  and nearly 2,000 rescued afterward.
  As of December 27, 2008, 37 people are known to have lost their lives in Texas due to Ike while hundreds are still missing.
  The storm had come ashore hours before daybreak with 110-mph winds and towering waves, pushing boats ashore, smashing many houses, flooding thousands of homes, knocking out windows in Houston's skyscrapers, uprooting trees, and cutting electric power to millions of customers for weeks or months.
context_section_description: In Houston, windows broke in downtown buildings such as the 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower, and Reliant Stadium was damaged. according to a witness interviewed by Fox News, furniture from offices in the JPMorgan Chase building was blown out of the shattered windows and into the parking garage across the street. A fire partially burned Brennan's restaurant in downtown Houston, but workers were rescued. Many trees were uprooted, and bus stop shelters were mangled. The Houston Theater District was flooded.
  Although electric power was out in most of the region, the lights remained on at the Texas Medical Center, a complex of about a dozen hospitals. At Memorial Hermann Hospital, patients were coming in with a variety of problems, including people who had run out of medicine or oxygen, or others who had cuts and bruises.
  Based on information compiled by the US Center for Disease Control, twenty-eight deaths in Harris County are attributed to the indirect effects of Ike, including illnesses, and accidents, such as carbon monoxide poisoning, fires, and tree cutting. 
  Hurricane Ike affected Houston Astros' late dash for Major League Baseball's playoffs, indefinitely postponing Friday and Saturday's games against the Chicago Cubs.
  Flights in and out of Houston's two major airports (Bush Intercontinental and Hobby) were suspended on Friday September 12, 2008, with plans to resume on the following Sunday.  However, as of Sunday September 14, 2008, Intercontinental remained without power, but both airports planned to re-open Monday with limited service.
  Due to large number of destroyed, damaged, or dysfunctional traffic lights, most Houston roads remained clogged two weeks after Ike hit. Many highway exits were jammed and caused a gridlock on highways as well, especially during rush hours. Many gas stations were out of service for a week because of no electricity to pump the gas. The few that functioned resulted in long lines and only once a week gasoline deliveries. This "hit and miss" to find gasoline led to the buying out of gasoline once it was delivered. Similarly there were long lines in most of the few open grocery stores, home repair stores, and restaurants.
caption: Windows were damaged on the JPMorgan Chase Tower.
exif: {"Image Make": "PENTAX Corporation", "Image Model": "PENTAX K10D", "Image Orientation": "0", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:09:13 10:50:46", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "584", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 33, 0, 1, 0, 22, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1180", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6927", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:09:13 10:50:46", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:09:13 10:50:46", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "1/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "21", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2592", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3872", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1056", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Bracket", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "31", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Soft", "EXIF Saturation": "Soft", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "3", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "7cbbcf5c2ec026a5192302fe9051b019"}