HOUSTON — As recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast slowly expanded Wednesday, local leaders and federal officials resolved their spat over logistical tie-ups that kept thousands of residents from getting food and supplies from government aid stations.
But in hard-hit Galveston Island, Hurricane Ike's widespread devastation left frazzled city officials sniping at one another about the crush of residents who wanted to return to a place that medical experts said is a health hazard.
More than 1 million people in the region are without electricity, and tens of thousands are still in shelters across Texas. But Houston residents got good news when authorities said the city's water was safe to drink.
On Bolivar Peninsula northeast of Galveston, where most homes and businesses were swept away by a powerful tidal surge, 200 to 250 people are refusing to leave. The peninsula has essentially become an island, cut off by flooded roads and mountains of sand and debris.
State officials worry that it will take weeks to restore basic utilities in towns like Galveston and communities near the Texas-Louisiana border because power substations have been demolished and key infrastructure systems are down.
In Houston, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff met with local officials and promised to deal with the problems of supply distribution.
Earlier in the week, a federal employee sent away a supply truck that arrived late in the day at one Harris County distribution center, citing concerns about leaving the goods unguarded overnight. At other centers, crowds stood in line for hours, only to learn that there were no supplies.
A clearly frustrated Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett took over the logistics operations Tuesday. They opened extra centers and ordered supply trucks to drive through the night so that supplies would be available at daybreak to the region's hardest-hit areas.
By Wednesday, some of the problems were easing.
At a distribution site on Navigation Boulevard in southwest Houston, a line of cars stretched for several blocks. But the traffic flow moved quickly and smoothly.
Tiffany Warren and her 9-month-old son had fled her flooded apartment for her mother's place, where the electricity and plumbing returned Wednesday.
"This is the first real help we've gotten," Warren said of the relief site. The food, water and ice were "a real blessing after some rough days." She said she had been living off supplies bought at a pharmacy Sunday after a three-hour wait.
