Ike kills 4, floods tens of thousands of homes, surge reaches 30 miles inland [LATEST PICTURES OF IKE DAMAGE IN TEXAS]

This is Crystal Beach, Texas

In downtown Houston, winds shattered the windows of gleaming skyscrapers, sleeting glass onto the streets below. Police used bullhorns to order people back into their homes. Furniture littered the streets, and business documents stamped "classified" had been carried by the wind through shattered office windows.

More than 3 million were without power in Texas at the height of the storm, and it could be weeks before it was fully restored. Utilities made some progress by late Saturday, and lights returned to parts of Houston. Between Ike and Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav, 180,000 homes and businesses in Louisiana were without power.

Ike was the first major storm to directly hit a major U.S. metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.

Storm surge that crawled some 30 miles inland in Louisiana flooded tens of thousands of homes. A levee broke and some 13,000 buildings flooded in Terrebonne Parish, 200 miles from Texas. More than 160 people had to be saved from floodwaters near St. Charles.

In Texas, the mayor of Orange, Brown Claybar, said he saw water overflowing the levees in the southern part of Orange early Saturday, something he's never witnessed in his life. Roads were covered with floodwaters, which he hoped would start to recede Sunday so crews could make better progress checking on residents.

Above, downtown Galveston.
"They're not able to turn on the pumps that would drain the city because the water is still coming over the levees," he said. "Any property that is flooded is holding the water because there is no place for the watershed to draw it to." - Yahoo

clipped from news.yahoo.com "We just didn't think it was going to come up like this," said the boy's father, Lee King. "I'm from New Orleans, I know better. I just didn't think it was going to happen." The water had reached 3 feet deep in Jeffrey Jordan's Galveston living room by the time police arrived to save him and his family. The death toll so far was low, and rescuers were hoping they could keep it from rising. Only four deaths were blamed on the storm — two in Louisiana, and two in Texas, and no crews had reported finding bodies in inundated homes. Some coastal residents waded through chest-deep water with their belongings and children in their arms to get to safety Saturday. Military helicopters loaded others carrying plastic bags and pets in their arms and brought them to dry ground. "What's really frustrating is that we can't get to them," Galveston police officer Tommie Mafrei said.