Ike slams Gulf Coast,
locals ready to help

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

CONVENT, La. — As Hurricane Ike pounded ashore late Friday night and early today, Joy Jimenez and Shirley Hancock, American Red Cross volunteers from the San Juan Chapter in Farmington, which covers Gallup and Grants as well, “hunkered down” to wait out the storm.

The pair is in a small town, Convent, south of Baton Rouge where they have been serving between 400 to 1,000 hot meals every day to Hurricane Gustav victims.

Gustav hit the region on labor day.

“We are expecting the outer bands of Hurricane Ike to hit us in the morning (today) with rain and winds at least 45 mph,” Jimenez said.

“The Red Cross does not want us out in those kind of conditions,” she said.

In the location where the pair are sleeping, electricity was spotty, going on and off throughout the past few days because of high winds.

Preparing for evacuees

Scott Snyder, emergency services director for the Mid-Rio Grande American Red Cross Chapter in Albuquerque, was scheduled to return from Baton Rouge this morning to prepare area shelters, for the possibility of evacuees from the Texas coast, including Galveston, surrounding communities and possibly Houston, 60 miles inland.

Emergency officials told Houston residents to “hunker down” to wait out the storm rather than try to evacuate as they did in 2005 for Hurricane Rita because more than 100 people died in the panic-driven evacuation that year.

Late Friday afternoon, Hurricane Ike was a Category 2 hurricane and was expected to hit the Category 3 level by the time it made landfall with winds topping 111 mph, National Weather center officials projected. White capped waves, about 15 feet high, were already topping Galveston’s 15-foot high seawall Friday afternoon. Galveston itself is only 10 feet above sea level.

Gallup and Grants areas should not receive any of the high winds or rain that accompanies a hurricane this weekend or even into next week.

“Hurricane Ike will head east into Eastern Texas and Oklahoma,” Tim Shy, a meteorologist and senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque said.

No wind, rain from Ike

“We are at the end of the monsoon season so the next week should be drier than we have been experiencing,” Ed Polasko, an NWS meteorologist said Friday afternoon.

“Hurricane Ike will bring much rain and winds to East Texas and Oklahoma, even Arkansas, in the area including Gallup and Grants, we should have a much drier week until the end of next week,” Polasko said.

Jimenez said she and her partner Hancock should hear by the beginning of the week on whether they will be relocated or stay where they are.

As of mid-week, the Red Cross emergency relief volunteers, such as Jimenez and Hancock, were serving 400,000 meals a day in Louisiana and surrounding states.

“While we are not serving meals today, because of Ike, we are catching up on our sleep,” Jimenez said. “We didn't really understand how tired we were until we sat down.”

American Red Cross, San Juan Chapter information: 1-888-272-3525.
To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 285-4560 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.