This morning, according to the news article I just read, they are expecting to have to go into ravaged areas and rescue about 100,000 people who did not heed the mandatory evacuations. The emergency services received thousands of calls last night, which they could not respond to because of the terrible conditions. Supposedly there are people on rooftops in coastal towns under six feet of water.
Supposedly yesterday there was a pocket of immigrants (Spanish and Vietnamese speaking) who were not leaving a mandatory evacuation area. The mayor of Houston personally drove out to beg them to leave. It turned out they were confused and frightened due to the language issues and lack of money. The mayor called for three city busses and had them carried off to a shelter. They say that the mayor saved dozens of lives doing that.
Supposedly at least some of the people who stayed thought that God would protect them.
To those people I say this:
God knows that we have modern science to issue storm warnings. He knew that you were seeing and hearing the warnings, and He knows that local emergency services and policitians came to your door to beg you to leave.
God - AND the state of Texas AND the lcoal communities AND the US government - did their best to protect you and your family with these warnings!
In refusing to heed the warnings, you clearly put your own will above God's.
The storm is still a category one hurricane and heading north to Dallas, Oklahoma, etc. It is moving pretty quickly for such a huge system, and should be nuking us way up here with rain (but not winds) late this weekend (in the Detroit area we should be getting 6+ inches of rain over the course of the weekend between the storm system already here, which will combine with the Ike remnants then sweep east).
I guess we will all know how many people they pull out of devastated areas in the next few days - and how many of them will be needing intense medical care. And whether or not they will start pulling federal employees out of their regular jobs and deploying them to the disaster area shortly after that.