Weather Signs

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — One week after Hurricane Ike wiped out whole neighborhoods and nearly every basic service in Galveston, there is a plan to start letting some 45,000 evacuees back to their hobbled hometown. Those who left heeded dire warnings to flee. Now they've been given a new warning: Going home won't be easy. No power, limited sewer services and spotty water utilities are among the trials that city officials say could await residents when a gradual reopening of Galveston begins next week. "You will need to decide if you want to come back in those conditions," city manager Steve LeBlanc said Friday. Residents will be allowed to return in phases, starting from the least damaged areas.

Shrimpers and oystermen lost their boats to the muck. Tourist areas on the coast that should be bustling at the start of convention season are flattened. Lingering power outages are keeping offices empty and restaurants closed from Texas through the Midwest. It will take months or more to tally Hurricane Ike's financial toll, but one thing is clear: Almost nobody in its path escaped unscathed. The storm carried hurricane-force winds as far north as Kentucky — which suffered its widest power outage in history — and driving rain clear into New England. More than 500,000 people remained without power Friday in Kentucky and Ohio; schools in Louisville, were to open Monday after Ike closed them for a week.

In Texas, power has been restored to more than half the customers who lost electricity during the storm. The fuel industry reports that more than 75% of retail stations have resumed operations and nearly 100% of terminals were operating. Ike crashed ashore last weekend near the mouth of Galveston Bay, which produces about 15 million pounds of seafood each year. Shrimpers and oystermen there will practically have to start over. Even those who can salvage their trawlers will have to cope with the carpet of debris Ike dumped on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. However, in Houston, where the booming energy industry has kept the nation's fourth-largest city economically stable in a nationwide slump, the outlook was downright positive. The city's port survived with minimal damage, and the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production barely took a dent.

BHUBNESHWAR, India (AP) — Monsoon flooding has killed at least 16 people and left more than 220,000 marooned in villages in eastern India as incessant rains caused a river to breach its banks in several places, an official said. So far, 180,000 people have been evacuated to relief camps. The new flooding comes just a month after the monsoon-swollen Kosi river, a Ganges tributary that flows from Nepal to India, burst its banks and submerged nearly 1,000 villages in the impoverished northern Indian state of Bihar, killing at least 48 people and driving more than a million others from their homes.