Houston littered with debris - and paperwork

14 September 2008 19:45  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Toppled trees, mangled metal and dead birds littered the streets of downtown Houston on Sunday as the hub of North America’s petrochemical industry struggled to recover from Hurricane Ike, the worst storm to ravage the area in years.

Amid reports that 90% of metropolitan Houston’s 3m residents were without electricity, the city’s usually vibrant downtown resembled a ghost town, the streets sparkling with broken glass blasted from skyscraper windows.

 

Although electric power was available in much of the city’s centre, there was little movement in the fourth-largest US metropolitan area.

 

Hurricane Ike pummelled downtown Houston with full fury late on Friday.  As plate glass windows exploded by the dozens from several high-rise offices in the city centre, whipping winds sucked paperwork and even some office furniture out of buildings and scattered that wreckage in the streets.

Bayous, the usually timid waterways that meander through Houston and are one of the city’s hallmarks, overflowed their banks to swamp adjoining neighbourhoods with floodwaters.  The surging bayous swept still more tree limbs and other debris into the city’s streets.

The locally famed Buffalo Bayou Walk, a jogging trail that winds through downtown along the shores of its namesake bayou, was modelled after San Antonio’s famed Riverwalk.  But the path was now part of the riverbed for the bayou’s swollen waters.

 

Police cars with lights flashing stood sentry in the middle of many roads, warning residents and passers-by away from high water, even though few civilian drivers dared to venture out into the city.

Despite the weather, about 100 residents of the city’s downtown district crowded into a popular sports bar on Houston’s Main Street, one of the few pubs or restaurants in operation in Ike’s wake.

 

The dozen or so television screens in the pub showcased college football games, bull riding - and emergency broadcasts from state and local officials.

The tallest skyscraper in the city, the JP Morgan Chase Tower, was hardest hit in downtown, with many of its windows punched out by the storm.  Paperwork from offices in the building drifted through the air and ultimately added to the street litter with pages from private equity manuals, memos and even bits and pieces of computer keyboards.

 

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By: David Rosen
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