Ike May Push Evacuees to Dallas

2008-09-10 00:26:23 (GMT) (WiredPRNews.com - Dallas, Weather)

Fort Worth, TX (WiredPRNews.com)—As hurricane Ike roars into the Gulf of Mexico, the Red Cross and Dallas County commissioners are getting ready for possible evacuees.

When Gustav hit last week, the Dallas Convention Center served as the shelter for over 1,000 people, according to a Sept. 9, 2008 Dallas Morning News.com article by Rudolph Bush and Kevin Krause. The convention center will serve as the primary location for evacuees, according to the article. About 2,400 evacuees stayed in Dallas shelters during Gustav, according to the Dallas Morning News.com article.

As of 5 p.m. Central Standard Time the Hurricane Center at NOAA.com showed Ike between the western tip of Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula, heading northwest toward the Texas coast. The site indicated that Ike is a category one hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour.

By all accounts, the mandatory evacuation New Orleans in advance of Hurricane Gustav was an amazing success with an estimated two million area residents sitting out the storm in Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. According to a Sept 1, 2008 Associated Press report that appeared on a Hawaiian TV station’s website, only seven people died in the US because of Gustav.

This is quite a contrast to the estimated 1,800 deaths from Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall nearly three years to the day that Gustav hammered the Louisiana coast. Residents in the Caribbean nations of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were not as fortunate, according to the AP story, where Gustav claimed 94 lives.

http://kgmb9.com/main/content/view/9431/42/

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/DN-evacuees_09met.ART.State.Edition1.269f9d3.html

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Jason Meeks · Filed Under Dallas, Weather