WEATHER

People from the special events production industry are ... planning an event for tomorrow night. They'll be at Gilley's Dallas raising money for the American Red Cross, which has been hit financially as it's responded to hurricanes Gustav and Ike. (You can also donate online.)

Entertainment includes a band, DJ, a casino room and a silent auction.

When: 6:30-9:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Gilley's Dallas, 1135 S. Lamar St.
Tickets: $20 at the door
Ages 21 and up only

Evacuees staying at area motels and private homes who need a bus ride home should call (817) 392-1025.
Fort Worth, Beaumont, Baytown and Houston-area residents who fled Hurricane Ike and are at shelters in Tarrant, Hood, Johnson and Parker counties are scheduled to head home Monday by bus.
By about 9 a.m., buses will pick up guests at shelters. Guests who arrived in the area in their own vehicles will also return home.
More than 1,600 evacuees were being sheltered in the four counties. Now that hurricane-affected areas have been deemed safe for return, most shelters will be deactivated, along with the shelter operations hub operated by the City of Fort Worth at Wilkerson-Greines Activity Center.
The City of Fort Worth has established a transportation reservation telephone line for those staying in area hotels or with friends and family.
All Hurricane Ike guests staying in area hotels or with friends and family who will need a ride home should call (817) 392-1025 to reserve bus space. Guests with special considerations, such as wheelchairs, should provide that information when they call to make transportation reservations.
All guests are encouraged to register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be considered for financial aid. Registration can be completed online at www.fema.gov or by phone at (800) 621-FEMA (3362). Computers for those seeking to register with FEMA are available at the Southside Community Center, 959 E. Rosedale Ave.

Oncor reports Saturday that the company's repair work is done in southeast Texas.

Oncor officials say every home or business in southeast Texas affected by Hurricane Ike that could take electricity had power. Some homes and businesses may be too damaged to be restored, the company says.

At the hurricane's peak, about 108,000 homes and businesses were without power in the Lufkin, Nacogdoches and Tyler areas.

Fort Worth city officials are making transportation plans for when evacuees can return home.

The city has established a transportation reservation telephone line -- 817-392-1025 -- to reserve bus space for those staying in area hotels or with friends and family.

City officials say a timetable for return trips home has yet to be established, but gathering information now on evacuees needing return transportation will help the city secure the appropriate number of buses.

The Texas attorney general's consumer complaint hotline is staffed this weekend. People can call (800) 252-8011 between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to report price gouging issues or other complaints.

Consumers are also urged to file complaints online at www.texasattorneygeneral.gov.

The attorney general's safe shelter hotline is staffed between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. That number is (866) 385-0333.

The Red Cross has consolidated the number of Dallas-Fort Worth shelters. Fourteen remain in operation.

There are 699 evacuees in three Dallas area shelters. And more than 800 people are housed in 11 Fort Worth area shelters, officials report.

Officials say the shelters will remain open until all families are able to return home.

Fort Worth city officials report that a crew of 47 employees returned home Saturday after a week helping in Hurricane Ike recovery efforts. Workers helped clear debris and downed tree limbs to make areas accessible to residents and utility crews.

Another Fort Worth crew left Saturday morning and will help next week with recovery efforts.

Some Houstonians have expressed appreciation for the help of Fort Worth workers.

In a letter addressed to Mayor Mike Moncrief, Houston resident Myra Grant wrote:
"Thank you for helping us. For sending your resources, your employees -- thank you for sending all of it to Houston. Knowing that there are others here to help our city get back on its feet is a relief. Seeing the longhorn on the side of all those vehicles gives me hope that we will get through this."

From reporter Kathy Goolsby:
Bowles Life Center located at 2750 Graham St. in Grand Prairie will re-open for regular business operations beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday. The Bowles Life Center served as an American Red Cross shelter for 10 days, providing assistance to 76 people who were displaced from their homes due to Hurricane Ike. The center will extend all memberships for 14 days as gratitude to those members for their understanding and cooperation during the emergency situation.

From sending police officers to non-perishables, the Dallas area keeps stepping up to the plate to help our Gulf Coast neighbors. Half Price Books is also holding a drive near NorthPark this Sunday.

From the North Texas and Tarrant Area food banks:

The North Texas Food Bank in Dallas and the Tarrant Area Food Bank in Fort Worth are committed to helping their sister Food Banks in Houston and Beaumont as they try to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Ike. Tarrant Area and North Texas Food Bank will prepare and transport 4,000 family food boxes to Houston and Beaumont so families will have food when they are allowed to return home.

The Food Banks can't do it alone; they need the public's help. Kroger, Tom Thumb and Albertsons--all longtime and valued partners for both food banks- responded to the call for help.

The grocers will have pre-packed bags of needed items available for purchase at prices ranging from $5 to $20. Customers can purchase the bags at stores throughout the DFW area and can leave them in the store.

The food drive will run from now through Oct. 12 at most stores.

Needed items are:

No, Ike had no lasting impact on global warming, but a little more warming could have had a big effect on Ike, says Dr. Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground site. It seems that Arctic ice was at its second thinnest on record this summer (just shy of 2007's record), with ice so reduced that boats could freely circle the Arctic Ocean.

Now, global warming remains the subject of much debate, and melting ice has only a modest affect on ocean levels. But the loss of reflective ice around the North Pole means summer sun shines on darker water. Water temperatures go up and everything is just a bit warmer, and eventually, places like the Greenland ice sheet begin melting. And that's trouble, Dr. Masters says.

Some reports -- including one published in Science magazine this month -- suggest that sea levels could rise 2.6-6.6 feet by 2100. If waters in the Gulf were three feet higher than they are now, imagine the damage from a storm like Ike.

"Hurricane Ike's storm surge would have overwhelmed the levees in Port Arthur, flooding the city and its important oil refineries," Dr. Masters writes. "Gavelston's seawall would have been overtopped and possibly destroyed, allowing destruction of large portions of Galveston." New Orleans would have suffered much the same.

It's got to be the most famous weather warning ever, yes? I'm talking about the forecast warning issued by the Houston/Galveston NWS office a day and a half before Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast. The one that warned that some people who failed to evacuate faced "certain death." I wondered how a forecaster comes up with language like that under the stress of an oncoming storm. It turns out that: They don't. The National Weather Service has a computer template that has standard language for every kind of weather warning you can think of. Included in those warnings is one for an unprecedented storm surge on a low coastal zone. And it uses the "certain death" line.

Now, the decision about when to pull out the thermonuclear option of warnings (Where do you go for more dire wording than "certain death"? Warning people their immortal soul would be in danger?) is a matter of the judgment of the forecasters on the scene.Here is my article about how that forecast came to be. I talked to the forecaster in charge of the Houston/Galveston office and got the details.

Houston Chronicle - Power and water out for a week or more. Sewage spewing into homes and streets. Long lines for gas and supplies. A rising death count not just from a major catastrophe, but complications in its aftermath.

Associated Press - It's been nearly a week since Hurricane Ike bulled ashore, and the images of once-bustling coastal Texas communities reduced to only a faint shadow of their old selves are no less staggering.

Galveston County Daily News - Despite the images of horrific destruction broadcast on television and by other media across the nation, the island is not beyond salvation and recovery efforts are ahead of schedule, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said Thursday.

Dallas Morning News - The storm and the recovery in photos

Associated Press - The numbers on deaths, evacuees and more

Houston Chronicle - Friday, September 19, 2008 front page

The U.S. Minerals Management Service has raised the number of Gulf of Mexico pumping platforms destroyed by Hurricane Ike to 49 (of 3,800), up from a count of 28 earlier this week.

No word yet whether the companies that operated the platforms will rebuild. They produced a combined 13,000 barrels of oil and 84 million cubic feet of natural gas a day -- out of a total Gulf production of 1.3 million barrels of oil and 7.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day.

Fellow reporter Dave Levinthal posted an item on the blog earlier about a party the Texas Rangers and The Salvation Army were throwing for kids displaced by Hurricane Ike at the Dallas Convention Center.

The kids loved them! Texas Rangers Wes Littleton, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Travis Metcalf, Bill White, Brian Gordon, Brandon Boggs and Nelson Cruz were good sports. I bet their hands were tired after signing all those autographs, but maybe they're used to it.

The story didn't make it in the paper, but you can read about it here.

Also, click here to watch the video.

Photo: Blanca Cantu/DMN

Oncor customers in Tyler, Jacksonville and Whitehouse are preparing to go back to normal service. Oncor spokesperson Carol Peters said crews are at the end of restoration there.
Only a few isolated outages remain which should be tackled today, she said.

Oncor will be shifting their attention to the 12,700 outages in Lufkin and Nacogdoches.

Photo: Art Miller/Oncor

As of 7 p.m. about 14,500 homes and businesses were still without power in southeast Texas, Oncor officials say.

Many in their service area lost power after Hurricane Ike made landfall Sept. 13.

About 9,700 outages were in Lufkin, 4,500 in Nacogdoches and about 100 in Tyler. Smaller communities like Jacksonville had under 50 and Crockett had 30.

Oncor spokesperson Carol Peters said the restoration in Crockett has been very difficult due to the terrain. About 70 poles were down last night and crews had to call in swamp equipment, she said.

Another update will be available after 10 a.m. this morning.

Photo: Art Miller/Oncor

The Humane Society has this account of rescue missions in southeast Texas.

Video: Watch the team in action

Photos: See the pets being rescued

The city's update as of Wednesday morning:

The current registered head count at the Dallas Convention Center shelter: 731 people.

Dallas Animal Services Pet Shelter update: 61 dogs, 9 cats, 2 birds.

From the Crime blog:

Dallas police tomorrow will send 15 officers to the Houston area for up to three weeks to help patrol neighborhoods and fight looting and other crimes, officials said this morning.

Several Texas Rangers baseball players are scheduled to serve a "ballpark-style lunch" to children displaced by Hurricane Ike and now living in a Dallas Convention Center shelter, city officials say.

Rangers scheduled to appear include German Duran, Travis Metcalf, Bill White, Brandon Boggs, Nelson Cruz, Brian Gordan and possibly Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Taylor Teagarden.

The event, which will be conducted within the Dallas Convention Center, is being organized by the Salvation Army.

Photo: Kye Lee/DMN

From an Oncor press release:

As of 2 p.m. today, Oncor had restored electricity to two-thirds of the homes and businesses in its service area that lost power after Hurricane Ike made landfall on Sept. 13. Fewer than 30,000 residents are without power in southeast Texas, primarily in the Lufkin and Nacogdoches areas. Oncor projects that power will be essentially restored by the end of the week for all affected communities.

"Although this has been a difficult restoration because of the downed lines, structural damage and trees falling into and around our lines, Oncor personnel have overcome these obstacles to restore power to the vast majority of southeast Texas residents affected by Hurricane Ike," said Brenda Pulis, Oncor senior vice president of distribution. "Oncor's crews are experienced at working in difficult conditions and our game plan has worked well."

Photo: AP

From staff writer Holly Yan:

Dallas ISD school officials will visit four hurricane shelters Wednesday to enroll displaced children in school.

The representatives will be at Samuell-Grand Recreation Center, Loos Field House, Ellis Davis Field House and the Dallas Convention Center from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bilingual staff members will be at each shelter.

Evacuee children in the Dallas area who are not staying in one of the shelters can enroll at their nearest school.

Photo: Courtney Perry/DMN

Over on the Metro blog, DMN columnist Jacquielynn Floyd has some high praise for the Houston mayor for his leadership during Hurricane Ike. She's not so keen on the mayor of Galveston.

A press release from the Texas Attorney General:

In the wake of Hurricane Ike, the Office of the Attorney General's Consumer Complaint Hotline has received hundreds of price gouging complaints from across the state. Most complaints allege price gouging on gas and lodging; others report price hikes involving food, water and power generators. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is investigating some consumers' claims that they were unlawfully charged inflated prices for necessities including fuel, hotel lodging and other items.

Although Hurricane Ike has left the state, the governor's disaster declarations are still active, so the OAG continues to have enforcement authority to pursue price gouging complaints in 99 Texas counties. Under Texas law, vendors are prohibited from charging exorbitant prices for necessities such as groceries, clothing, medical supplies, lodging, repair work and fuel during and after declared disasters.

Photo: G.J. McCarthy/DMN