Beaumont Enterprise Ike 09-29

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SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

V OL . CXXVIII , N O. 329 

 50 Cents

 THE ADVOCATE FOR SOUTHEAST TEXAS SINCE 1880 

$700B bailout measure reached Congress expected to pass rescue deal By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Photos by Valentino Mauricio/The Enterprise

Above, a mounted deer’s head, front center, was one of the few pos- foundation during the hurricane surge. Below, Matt White visits the sessions Glen Pavelka found while searching through the rubble of his truck near Gilcrest that he and several others floated on for almost an Crystal Beach home, which was pushed more than 300 yards from its hour before they were rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter.

Is anything salvageable? Want more Ike? ◆ Home furnishing and appliance stores get bittersweet boost from Ike, 3A ◆ As the first Ike lawsuits are filed, many Rita disputes aren’t yet resolved, 3A ◆ Help your fellow victims with one of these aid drives, 3A ◆ Two men tell story of survival floating in storm surge, 5A ◆ Damage causes Orange to relocate city offices, 5A ◆ List of city services and aid organizations, 11A ◆ View hundreds of Ike photos, ONLINE ◆ Up-to-minute hurricane relief news, ONLINE

These and more at BeaumontEnterprise.com

Bolivar residents sort through remains of their homes, lives By KYLE PEVETO

THE ENTERPRISE

Several hundred yards from where it stood before Hurricane Ike swept through Crystal Beach, Glenn Pavelka’s home lay in a mess among a dozen other houses.

The rising Gulf of Mexico carried the houses across Texas 87 and left them in a jumble of splintered wood and multicolored shingles. Pavelka walked along the pile’s edge and spotted a mounted deer’s head — a trophy from a hunting

trip more than two decades ago — sticking out of the heap. He rescued a small cabinet his grandmother made, along with intact crystal glassware. “Might not look like home,” the 48-year-old said while atop a mound of wooden siding, “but it feels like home.” Pavelka and his sister BOLIVAR, page 4A

Wind burn: Ike thrashes, salt dirties rice

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders and the White House agreed Sunday to a $700 billion rescue of the ailing financial industry after lawmakers insisted on sharing spending controls with the Bush administration. The biggest U.S. bailout in history won the Inside tentative sup◆ Highlights port of both of plan, 8A presidential ◆ How will candidates and we know if it goes to the works? 11A House for a vote today. Online The plan, bol◆ Read bill lixed up for days at Financial by election-year services. politics, would house.gov give the admin◆ Tell us istration broad what you power to use bilthink at lions upon bilBeaumont lions of taxpayer Enterprise. com

BILL, page 8A

◆ SE TEXAS TALES

Ike more costly than Rita, Carla combined By RYAN MYERS

Hurricane spoils what might have been best rice season in decades By KYLE PEVETO

THE ENTERPRISE

After Hurricane Ike blew through Southeast Texas on Sept. 13, Bill Dishman’s late-season crop of rice appeared to have made it through the storm. However, three or four days later, he said, the entire rice plant looked abused. “It just started looking bad, kinda funny. I can’t really describe it because I’ve never seen it before,” said Dishman, who has farmed in the China and Nome area for three decades. “That extreme wind for so long, so many hours, it just whipped it and literally burned it.” Rice farmers said 70 to 90 percent of the area’s rice crop had been collected when Ike blew through, submerging some fields in saltwater

Health clubs offer programs for those with ailments: 9A

The rice stem on the left was planted 2½ weeks before the stem on the right. The older rice, which was ready to be harvested, received more wind damage from Hurricane Ike due to its age.

and thrashing the plants and heads of others. The second, called the ratoon crop, grows after the first harvest and yields about 20 percent as much as the first, but farmers spend less to cultivate it. Farms inundated by saltwater in the storm surge south of Winnie will lose the entire second crop, said Mike Doguet, president of Doguet Rice Co. Others, such as Dishman, will lose some or all of their crops. “The second crop is usually used as a windfall,” said Thomas Wynn, director of market operations for the U.S. Rice Producers Association. “This year the second crop would have been particularly beneficial to farmers.” Although the price of rice

Guiseppe Barranco/The Enterprise

THE ENTERPRISE

Government officials and insurance companies last week estimated the bill for Hurricane Ike at $27 billion to $52 billion. The upper end of that range would lift Ike’s price tag more than 4.6 times Hurricane Rita’s cost and rival the expense of all U.S. storms with the exception of Hurricane Katrina. Rita, which clipped south Florida before making landfall at the TexasLouisiana state line in 2005, caused $11.3 billion in damages according to a report by the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The cost of Katrina, which did damage in Southeast Florida, Southeast Louisiana and Mississippi, is pegged at about $81 billion. More conservative figures bring Ike’s costs to more than double Rita. Jeffrey Masters, director of meteorology for Weather Underground, puts Ike’s cost at about $27 billion. COST, page 4A

RICE, page 4A

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Average price of a gallon of regular gas in Southeast Texas: Price as of Sunday morning

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$3.56

Sources: AAA, Oil Price Information Service