Hurricane Ike bore down on the Texas coast tonight with a wall of water that threatened a potential catastrophe for the US.
Waters rose rapidly as Ike moved within hours of striking low-lying areas near Houston with a possible 6-metre storm surge in what may be the worst storm to hit Texas in nearly 50 years.
‘Our nation is facing what is by any means a potentially catastrophic hurricane,’ said US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, warning that Ike's storm surge could present the gravest danger.
‘This certainly falls in the category of pretty much a worst case scenario.’
The US National Weather Service warned that people in coastal areas could ‘face the possibility of death’ from a massive storm surge. Officials said Ike could flood as many as 100,000 homes.
Although Ike is weaker than Hurricane Katrina its large scope gives it more water-moving power.
Ike was a Category 2 storm with 165kph winds as it moved on a course to pass directly over Houston - the fourth-largest city in the US.
Ike was expected to come ashore overnight, possibly as a dangerous Category 3 storm on the five-step intensity scale with winds of more than 178kph, the National Hurricane Center said.
About 13 million people in 132 counties along the Gulf coast could face hurricane and tropical storm conditions, the US National Census Bureau said.
About 600,000 Texas residents fled the island city of Galveston and low-lying counties under mandatory evacuation orders and authorities urged holdouts to move before Ike's winds started to make car travel dangerous.
