Hurricane Sandy, Texas is prepared

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2013/sep/26/texas-gulf-coast-inadequately-prepared-hurricanes/ HOUSTON — Five years after Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast, causing more than $30 billion in damage and killing at least 37 Texans, cities across the region have trumpeted their rebuilding efforts. But the tune was very different at Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center this week, where experts gathered to discuss the area’s vulnerability to future storms. It hasn’t improved, they said, and may have even worsened in the last few years — partly the result of explosive growth in the Houston Ship Channel that experts fear is occurring without appropriate hurricane safeguards. During Hurricane Ike, more than 100,000 homes and businesses flooded, most of them on or near Galveston Island — a barrier of sorts for Houston, which experienced much less damage from the storm. But had Ike followed a slightly different path, Houston would’ve faced a different fate, said Clint Dawson, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin. For communities on the coast, the biggest threat from large storms is the surge, the change in water level that can happen alarmingly quickly, and long before the storm makes landfall. That was the case with Ike, where, as Dawson recalled, “there was water in the streets, but no one knew a hurricane was approaching.” The dramatic growth of industry in the Houston Ship Channel, an economic engine for the state whose exports have exceeded even those of New York City, is one of the biggest causes for concern. Some researchers worry that a direct-hit hurricane would wreak havoc on the channel’s chemical and oil storage tanks, leading to spills and an environmental catastrophe.