THE largest search and rescue operation in Texas history kicked into gear today hours after Hurricane Ike slammed into the US Gulf Coast as a category two storm, packing a devastating ocean surge, knocking out power to millions and flooding coastal areas.
Some deaths as well as massive damage and flooding were reported across an 800km swathe of the Gulf Coast after more than 2.2 million people fled inland, according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
The centre of Ike made landfall at 5pm (AEST) yesterday on Galveston Island, where the sea rose up in fury and flooded vast areas of the island, and pounded the country`s fourth largest city Houston, prompting thousands of emergency calls across the hurricane impact zone.
Ike then weakened to a tropical storm, but continued to ravage eastern Texas with heavy rains and winds of 95km/h and was forecast to churn northward into Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.
"Our principal focus at this moment is search and rescue," Mr Chertoff said as he announced that more than 50 National Guard helicopters and two Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jets had been dispatched to the hurricane zone.
He said there were "some initial reports of a few deaths", and warned that "we may have other losses in the hours to come".
President George W. Bush declared his home state of Texas a disaster area, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.
About 179 rescues in Louisiana had already been performed today, Mr Chertoff said, while local Houston radio reported more than 100 rescues so far in the Houston area alone.
The storm knocked out power to nearly 2.4 million homes in and around Houston, including throughout the entire barrier island of Galveston, and another 220,000 customers in Louisiana, the US Department of Energy reported.
Officials said more than 100,000 residents of low-lying areas - including 20,000 in Galveston alone - decided to ride out the storm despite warnings from the national weather service that a wall of water up to six metres high could spell "certain death".
Yet early reports from Galveston and Houston suggest the storm surge, while devastating, was not as high as earlier forecast, although damage was expected to be severe.
In Galveston, resident Diane Thiel, 62, took refuge with about 1000 other people in a hotel, and said Ike appeared more dangerous than hurricanes Carla and Alicia that struck in 1961 and 1983. "I have never seen a hurricane like this. The amount of destruction is going to be beyond belief," Mrs Thiel said.
Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that Texas and federal agencies had launched the state`s largest-ever search and rescue operations just hours after Ike barrelled ashore, laying waste to scores of coastal communities as well as Houston.
He cautiously expressed optimism that his state was spared the worst, "but there is plenty of damage out there".
Houston port is one of the world`s largest, and computer models had forecast that much of it could have been submerged by the storm surge.
Live television images along large area of the Texas coast, including Galveston and nearby Clear Lake, showed boats tossed about a marina like toys, power poles and oak trees snapped or uprooted, siding shorn off buildings and homes, and floodwaters covering entire neighbourhoods.
The windows of several skyscrapers were blown out in Houston, where mayor Bill White urged people to stay off the streets and called on residents to use bottled water as a power outage lowered pressure at a key pumping station.
Mr Bush, who was keeping close tabs on conditions in his home state of Texas as well as hard-hit Louisiana, announced a suspension of restrictions on some imported petrol in response to Ike, which disrupted operations at Gulf Coast oil refineries and prompted petrol price-gouging in several US states as high as 50 per cent above normal rates.
Oil and gas production in the Gulf was largely shut off, though the US Department of Energy said Ike appeared likely to spare most rigs and platforms there.
At least 13 refineries were shuttered, representing a combined capacity of 3.7 million barrels of crude oil per day, a fifth of US refinery capacity.
AMERICANS gathered to mark the seventh anniversary of the terror attacks that shook the world.
