Texas Continues To Recover; Bush Views Damage

About 250 people who withstood Hurricane Ike on a coastal sliver of land will be forced off it so crews can begin the recovery effort, authorities said Tuesday, vowing to invoke emergency powers to make it happen.

County Judge Jim Yarbrough, the top elected official in Galveston County, said those who defied warnings that they would be killed if they rode out the storm on the Bolivar Peninsula are a "hardy bunch" and there are some "old timers who aren't going to want to leave."

The Texas attorney general's office is trying to figure out how legally to force the holdouts to leave, Yarbrough said. Local authorities are prepared to do whatever it takes to get residents to a safer place.

The peninsula is too damaged for residents to stay, and with no gas, no power and no running water, there is also concern about spread of disease, officials said.

Authorities may never know if people who tried to weather the storm were washed out to sea. So far, there are no confirmed fatalities, but Yarbrough and other officials said he didn't think that would hold.

Ike's death toll officially stood at 47 Tuesday, with most of the deaths coming outside of Texas.

Authorities confirmed a total of nine deaths in the Houston metropolitan area, all from post-storm debris-clearing work, house fires or carbon monoxide poisoning by generator use. Dozens of others had been treated for carbon monoxide poisoning, health officials said.

Three-quarters of Houston was still without power and residents still waited in line for hours on end for distributions of food, water and ice. The mayor of the nation's fourth-largest city complained that FEMA wasn't bringing in the supplies fast enough.

And even though officials offered no timetable for when Houston would have power again, a flow of people who fled Ike were cramming their way back onto freeways toward the city despite orders to stay away.

Problems continued at the 22 supply distribution centers that had been set up in Houston.

Mayor Bill White said he asked that a federal supervisor at a distribution center be fired for telling the drivers of two trucks -- one filled with ice and other with food -- to turn around. The supervisor thought the site was stocked, but it wasn't.

FEMA spokesman Marty Bahamonde said he was not aware of the situation White described.

White said other distribution centers were also not getting supplies quickly enough and most were running out of ice.

Bahamonde noted that workers from several agencies are working at the distribution points.

White eased the city's curfew, now from midnight to 6 a.m., but urged motorists to stay off the streets after dark. So far, about 100 people have been cited for curfew violations and 94 arrested for looting, authorities said.

President Bush Views Damage

President George W. Bush on Tuesday urged Americans to give money to help people recover from Hurricane Ike's battering of the Gulf Coast, warning against letting "disaster fatigue" slow donations when the need remains great.

The president also asked frustrated people who were displaced by the storm "to listen to state and local authorities before you come back." Many areas are dangerous because of unstable buildings.

Bush spoke to reporters from Houston, his first stop on a very fast trip through some parts of Texas hardest hit by Ike. He landed at Ellington Field in Houston to sunny skies, and was briefed on Ike and its aftermath inside a U.S. Coast Guard hangar before taking a helicopter tour of the damage. He next visits Galveston, where Ike made landfall on Saturday as Category 2 storm.

The president called the destruction a "tough situation."

While flying by helicopter from Houston to much harder-hit Galveston, Bush got an aerial tour of the damage. He saw the remains of the resort barrier island of Bolivar Peninsula, where there were flattened homes, flooded fields and bare foundations where houses once stood. Roads and beaches were strewn with debris. Homes that weathered the storm stood next to ones completely washed away. From the air, three sections of the same house that Ike tore asunder resembled children's blocks tumbled into a muddy field.

On the ground in Galveston, Bush held hands with Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas as they walked down a street where bushes were covered with black roofing paper. "They've got a great mayor and they're working hard," Bush shouted at reporters as he walked back to the presidential helicopter.

Bush's tour of the damage took the place of a fundraising swing he had planned for the day through Topeka, Kan., and Fort Worth, Texas. Those duties were being performed instead by first lady Laura Bush.

Earlier this month, Bush scrapped his planned opening-night speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., to fly instead to emergency command centers in Texas just as Hurricane Gustav hit. He returned to the region later that week to visit Louisiana, also socked by Gustav.