FREEPORT, TEXAS — Thousands of residents of Texas' vulnerable Gulf Coast clogged highways headed inland Thursday, heeding mandatory evacuation orders as Hurricane Ike churned through warm waters and took aim at southeastern Texas.
Facing a hurricane that Gov. Rick Perry said could have "extraordinary impact," authorities ordered the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents of low-lying coastal areas south and east of Houston. Chemical plants and refineries closed, bracing for high winds and damaging floods.
"I can't overemphasize the danger that is facing us," Perry told reporters in Austin. Ike is "going to do some substantial damage. It's going to knock out power and it's going to cause massive flooding."
Ike was a Category 2 storm late Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters predicted the storm would strengthen to a Category 3, with winds of at least 111 mph -- and possibly a Category 4 -- before making landfall early Saturday.
The storm was expected to curl north and east after slamming the Texas coast, pushing with reduced ferocity into eastern Texas and central Arkansas over the weekend.
Landfall is expected near Freeport, a shrimp and chemical center 60 miles south of Houston. The streets of the town were empty Thursday, in contrast with highways closer to Houston, which were jammed with people fleeing the storm.
"I'm spending the night on my shrimp boat, watching the Weather Channel on the satellite," said Rick Beale, 51, a fisherman and one of the few people left in Freeport. Standing near a line of anchored shrimp boats, Beale said he would decide today whether to "ride it out or just get out."
The biggest evacuation was for Galveston, where the entire population of the city and barrier island were ordered out.
"All neighborhoods and possibly entire coastal communities will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide," the hurricane center said of Galveston on Thursday evening. "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes will face certain death."
Traffic was sluggish but steady -- a dramatic departure from the chaotic evacuation for Hurricane Rita in 2005, when massive traffic jams left people stranded on roadsides, short of gas, food and water.
Perry predicted a storm surge of at least 14 feet, with some forecasters saying it could reach 20 feet in exposed coastal areas.
