Texans rescued in Ike's path of widespread damage

By Anna Driver

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Search teams picked their way through debris and inundated roadways in Texas on Sunday, rescuing nearly 2,000 residents stranded after Hurricane Ike flooded coastal regions and cut power to millions of people.

State and local officials asked the federal government to speed up relief efforts, while warning people not to return home until it was safe. About 2 million people were evacuated before the storm made landfall.

To add to the misery, officials warned of possible gasoline shortages even as the price of fuel was rising at the pump.

Ike cut a swath of destruction after slamming into the Texas coast early on Saturday and moving inland to Houston, the heart of the U.S. oil industry, forcing many refineries to shut down as a precaution.

President George W. Bush, who will visit Texas on Tuesday, said it was too early to determine the extent of the damage to U.S. energy infrastructure. The storm also halted crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, representing a quarter of U.S. output.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the storm damaged some offshore oil production facilities but it did not yet know the extent.

Authorities in Houston, the fourth most populous U.S. city, ordered a weeklong curfew because of flooding and downed power lines. Widespread outages could last for weeks.

Damage assessments have barely begun but early estimates suggest the bill could rise to $18 billion.

Local officials said rescue crews found at least three bodies on Galveston, an island city of 60,000 shredded by the storm. Overall, nearly 2,000 people have been rescued from flooded areas, state officials said.

As access to Galveston loosened, the extent of the damage because more clear. Block after block was flooded and streets were littered with the contents of homes.

"This is like Katrina without the deaths. We don't have many deaths but we have a lot of destruction," firefighter Mel Rourke Jr. said as he cleaned up his father's house in Galveston. "It took 24 hours to destroy something that took decades to build."

Ice, water and food from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have so far been slow to trickle into the hardest-hit areas, local media has reported.

"We expect FEMA to deliver these supplies, and we will hold them accountable," a visibly frustrated Houston Mayor Bill White told a televised news conference.

The Bush administration came under heavy fire for its slow and botched relief for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Thousands were left stranded for days in homes with flood waters reaching attics and in overcrowded evacuee centers.

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