ORANGE, Texas — As they plucked people from rooftops and wrecked neighborhoods Saturday, emergency responders grumbled over how many brushed off evacuation warnings and tried to ride out Hurricane Ike. Some of those who stayed behind Friday had second thoughts Saturday.
“When you stay behind in the face of a warning, not only do you jeopardize yourself, you put the first responders at risk as well,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “Now we’re going to see this play out.”
While more than 2 million people evacuated ahead of Ike, tens of thousands more ignored evacuation orders and swamped rescue crews Saturday with emergency calls from the the flooded lowlands of East Texas and western Louisiana.
“Of course it’s frustrating. There was a mandatory evacuation, and people didn’t leave,” said Steve LeBlanc, Galveston’s city manager. “They had enough time to get out. It’s just unfortunate that they decided to stay.”
Federal, state and local crews ventured out in boats, high-wheeled trucks and even dump trucks to save them. Dozens of helicopters soon joined the effort, along with Coast Guard jets.
Few people had a more harrowing night and morning than Galveston resident Lela Goff. She’s the caretaker of an elderly man who couldn’t be moved. She stayed with him all night and watched in horror as water, surging over the seawall, filled her neighborhood. The water rose to window level.
“We looked out our bedroom window, and we saw the Gulf of Mexico,” she said.
It got worse: A house next door caught fire. It spread to two adjacent houses. Firefighters rescued the elderly man; she caught a ride back home with journalists even as the houses were shooting red flames from their roofs.
Jason Reuter, 34, owns a bake shop and had planned to stay at home, until he saw the water rising. He splashed his way to a cousin’s house. They panicked when the water reached the bottom of the windows.
They launched a boat and, with five others, motored their way through the dark streets, past house fires, calling into the night to see if anyone needed help. Finally, they tied the boat to a palm tree, and he swam and ran his way in the eye of the storm to the San Luis resort and conference center.
“I’m just so happy I’m alive,” he said. “I was so scared. I prayed the whole way over here.”
Marjorie Anderson Henck, 67, endured the maelstrom with only her three cats for company. She’d refused her son’s entreaties to leave the island. She’d been through every hurricane since the unnamed storm of 1943.
But riding out this storm was a mistake, she said Saturday morning, her hair still wet from fetching ditch water to flush her toilet.
The enormous size of the storm presented its own set of problems for rescuers.
Ike spanned more than 500 miles and caused damage from south of Houston to the mouth of the Mississippi. In this vast area, rescuers struggled to pinpoint the hardest-hit places — and the most needy — among a patchwork of debris, fallen trees and flooded homes.
Meanwhile, Galveston Island officials reported rescuing more than 100 people.
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