HURRICANE IKE - Historic footage

The city of Houston was largely spared, although high winds caused many of the windows on the city’s tallest buildings to blow out including that of the 75-story JP Morgan Chase Building. Also a result of the high winds was power outages- some coastal Texas residents were without electricity for over a month after Ike’s landfall. Though not as hard hit, coastal Louisiana was still drying out from the surge that came ashore with Hurricane Gustav. Storm surge waters pushed up to 48 kilometers (30 miles) inland, and inundated homes in parts of Cameron, lower Vermilion, St. Mary, and Terrebonne Parishes.

It is estimated that insured damage in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, without considering storm surge or inland flooding, was about $10 billion. The National Flood Insurance Program estimated that insured losses from inland flooding and storm surge was approximately $2.5 billion in the same three states. Hurricane Ike is the third most costly hurricane in the history of the United States, behind only Katrina (2005) and Andrew (1992) at $24.9 billion (2008 USD). Hurricane Ike was also responsible for at least 195 fatalaties. Of these, 74 were in Haiti, which was already trying to recover from the impact of Fay, Gustav, and Hanna, which occurred earlier in 2008. In the United States, 112 people were killed.