Hurricane-hit Houston Imposes Week-long Curfew

Millions were left without water and power today as rescuers moved into devastated coastal areas of Texas and Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Ike.

The storm, which made landfall early yesterday morning, hit 600 miles of the Gulf Coast with winds of up to 100mph. Television pictures showed wooden frame houses strewn across freeways, boats deposited inland and advertising hoardings and power pylons lying on the ground.

While around 2m people took heed of a mandatory evacuation order, rescue efforts centered on the estimated 140,000 who chose to stay.

Fifty miles inland a week-long dusk to dawn curfew was imposed today on Houston as residents of the fourth largest city in the US faced days and possibly weeks without power and with little water, due to a drop in water pressure.

"Most of the lights are still out, traffic signals are still not working, debris is in the streets and it's dark in the community," Houston police chief Harold Hurtt said.

In downtown Houston high winds peeled steel panels from buildings and shattered windows in office blocks, causing glass to rain down onto the streets below. Most of the windows on one side of the state's tallest building, the 1,000-foot, 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower, blew out. The city's two main airports remained closed today.

Fourteen oil refineries in Texas remain shut down. Officials said that at its height the storm had stopped production of a quarter of US crude oil production.

The disruption to oil production was the biggest in three years, and pushed petrol prices up to over $5 per gallon in parts of Texas.

The US president, George Bush, announced that he would visit the area on Tuesday. After receiving a briefing from the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, Bush said that the federal government is providing 1.5m litres of water and 1m meals a day to the displaced.

"Our first priority is search and rescue," Bush said. "Obviously, this is a huge storm that is causing a lot of damage not only in Texas but also in parts of Louisiana."

Early estimates of the cost of the storm to insurance companies put Ike's damage at between $8-18bn. Flood damage and uninsured losses would likely push that total much higher, placing Ike in the top three costliest storms in US history.

Despite the widespread destruction to property and utilities, by this morning only four deaths, two in Texas, two in Louisiana, had been confirmed.

Although Hurricane Ike landed squarely on the 32-mile Galveston Island on the Texas coast, the storm rotated slightly to the north, bringing smaller storm surges than had been feared.

"The worst-case scenario that was spoken about ... did not occur," Texas governor Rick Perry said.

Heavy rain and tornado warnings today further impeded rescue attempts, with bayous in Houston and throughout the area overflowing.

Some 10,000 people were thought to have remained on Galveston Island, hunkered down in attics and shelters. Many had left last week as Hurricane Gustav approached - and missed - the area last week, and chose to sit out Hurricane Ike.

Fifty-two helicopters and 7,500 troops from the Texas National Guard took part in the rescue operation, described by Governor Perry as, "the largest in the history of the state of Texas". At least 100,000 homes in the state were flooded, according to officials.

Images from Galveston showed rescuers wading through streets waist-deep in water, surrounded by wrecked buildings and downed trees. Officials were going from structure to structure to search for those who had stayed behind in the expectation that the fatality rate would rise. Rescuers hoped to be able to spare those stranded in their homes from another night amid the wreckage.

"We don't know what we're going to find," Galveston mayor Lyda Ann Thomas told the Houston Chronicle. "We hope we'll find that the people who didn't leave here are alive and well."

Rescue helicopters began pulling people from buildings and off rooftops on Saturday afternoon. One man, however, used his own boat to get to safety.

"I know my house was dry at 11 o'clock, and at 12.30 am, we were floating on the couch putting life jackets on," Steven Rushing told reporters. Once the water reached the television, four feet off the floor, he said, he retrieved his boat from the garage and loaded his family into it.

"I didn't keep my boat there to plan on evacuating because I didn't plan on the water getting that high, but I sure am glad it was there," he said.