Looters, cost keep some from fleeing Ike

[September 13, 2008]  dateline(AP) -- The streets in this coastal city were mostly deserted Friday. Someone used red paint to scrawl "We don't like Ike" and "Take a Hike Ike 2008" on a boarded-up building.

A few stragglers remained, including a pair of teenagers riding their go-kart at full speed through the empty streets. Their older brother, Joseph Simmons, 22, said the family planned to leave around midday.

"It looks like it's going to get hairy," he said. "I'd stay if it was just me, but my family wants to go."

His neighbor, Jim Sharp, 53, a retired mechanic and former boat captain, planned to ride out the storm in his sky-blue bungalow. He has been through eight other hurricanes, five at sea and three on land.

"I know what to expect, what's coming. My biggest fear is looters. I saw what happened in Katrina and Rita. It ain't going to happen here," Sharp said as he leaned on his chain-link fence, elbow resting over a sign warning, "Private Property. No Trespassing."

Sharp was confident the city's levees would hold up under the expected storm surge. The winds were another matter.

"It ain't the wind, it's what flying in the air that hurts you," said Sharp, who said he would try to leave if the wind reaches speeds above 115 mph. "It's just common sense. If you've been through one, then you know what to do next time."

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MATAGORDA, Texas (AP) - Near midday Friday, a strengthening breeze off the water carried the first whiffs of barbecue under a carport beside a 110-year-old lavender and white Victorian house.

Karen Mecklenburg, her fiance Wayne Petrosky and friend "Big Al" Wachel reclined amid coolers, the grill and a generator, waiting for the smell to draw out a handful of other holdouts in this town of about 900. Officials had issued a mandatory evacuation order for the entire county.

Matagorda is about 100 miles south of Houston, 8 miles from the Gulf of Mexico at the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Colorado River.

The house, built by Mecklenburg's great-grandfather, has seen its share of storms, but that was before a levee was built to protect the town.

"I've rode out quite a few," Mecklenburg said. "It can get pretty hairy."

Mecklenburg's experience evacuating for Hurricane Rita - when she spent about $600 and Matagorda ended up fine - led her to stay this time.

"I have a three-story house, I'll just start going up," she said.

Wachel remembered Claudette, a 2003 hurricane that made landfall to the south, being a "humdinger" that took off his roof. Still, he was ready to play dominos until Ike arrived.

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DALLAS - For Texas residents forced to flee their homes ahead of Hurricane Gustav earlier this month, the second evacuation in less than two weeks took its toll.

Lisa Pratt, still broke after spending $500 to leave her Nederland home before Gustav, reluctantly corralled her three teenagers into her car Friday and drove aimlessly north in search of shelter.

A mandatory evacuation order for her city had been issued Thursday. But not until the storm surge began creeping nearby early Friday did she break down and stuff her trunk with suitcases and pillows again.

"It's not that we ignored it," said Pratt, 38, as she drove through Lufkin, Texas, about 120 miles north of her home. "We just have no money left from the last time we evacuated. We have nowhere to go."

In Dallas, Clara Dolloff, 48, of Baytown, near the Houston ship channel, briefly left the city's convention center with her young grandchildren for fresh air, then fumed as she discovered they would have to again pass through long security lines to get back in.

"I'd rather swim in a hurricane than evacuate again," said Dolloff's daughter, Christina Lilley.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - In southeast Louisiana, officials said about 130 people remained on the barrier island of Grand Isle, which was cut off Friday by as much as 5 feet of water on the only connecting road.

The island's 1,500 or so residents were told to leave, but some did not. Most who remained were hunkering down together at the island's community center, officials said.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said search and rescue teams were positioned to head toward the island as soon as the winds and water died down, but he told residents who may feel threatened that they could break into a state wildlife and fisheries lab that was deemed a safe structure.

He called it "the most unusual piece of advice I might give."

"I'd ask you to do as little damage as possible while you're in that lab, but people's safety, people's lives, are obviously more important than property," he said.

The island was swamped with 9 feet of floodwater during Hurricane Gustav earlier this month, and many residents still hadn't returned from that evacuation.

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Associated Press writers Monica Rhor in Freeport, Texas; Christopher Sherman in Matagorda, Texas; Paul J. Weber and Linda Stewart Ball in Dallas; and Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La., contributed to this report.

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