Ike roars ashore in Galveston, Texas

(AP) Massive Hurricane Ike ravaged southeast Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and ferocious wind gusts as residents who decided too late they should have heeded orders to evacuate made futile calls for rescue. It remained unclear how many people may have perished as the worst of Ike was passing over the Houston-Galveston area. But even before daylight arrived, damage was considered extensive. Thousands of homes and government buildings flooded, roads were washed out, 2.9 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated as crews could not reach them.

The biggest fear was that tens of thousands of people had defied orders to flee and would need to be rescued from submerged homes and neighborhoods.

As dawn broke, emergency officials were fielding pleas for help from residents along the coast who remained behind and were trapped in their homes. Gov. Rick Perry mobilized 7,500 National Guard troops and his homeland security chief, Steve McGraw, said rescues would start as soon as crews could safely go out.

The eye of the storm powered ashore at 3:10 a.m. EDT at Galveston with 110 mph winds, just shy of a Category 3 storm. Because Ike was so huge - nearly as big as Texas itself - hurricane winds pounded the coast for hours before landfall and would continue through much of the morning, with the worst winds and rain after the center came ashore, forecasters said.

By 9 a.m. EDT, the stubborn storm system had weakened a Category 1 with winds near 90 mph as it moved inland and passed Houston. It was expected to turn toward Arkansas later in the day.

Wilson Shaffer, chief of the National Weather Service's evaluation division, said the storm surge was smaller than predicted, but the region wasn't out of the clear as the storm continued on its path. The highest surge Saturday morning was about 13.5 feet at Sabine Pass in Texas, according to tidal gauges. The surge at Galveston was 11 feet, about half of what was predicted.

Forecasters had warned that the surge could reach 25 feet, which would have been the highest in recorded history in Texas, above 1961's Hurricane Carla, a storm that brought a 22-foot wall of water.

In Houston, about 60 miles inland, 911 operators received about 1,250 calls in 24 hours. Streets around the city's theater district became rushing streams and shards of glass fell from the sparkling skyscrapers that define the skyline of America's fourth-largest city. Residents were urged to stay inside Saturday morning even if they thought the storm had passed.

The only parts of the city with power were downtown and the massive medical center section. Suppliers warned it could be weeks before service was restored.

Though 1 million people fled coastal communities near where the storm made landfall, authorities in four counties alone said roughly 140,000 ignored mandatory evacuation orders. Other counties were unable to provide numbers but officials were concerned many had stayed behind.

"We don't know what we are going to find," Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. "We hope we will find the people who are left here alive and well."

As the front of the storm moved into Galveston, fire crews rescued nearly 300 people who changed their minds and fled at the last minute. Emergency crews received about 100 calls for help during the night but weren't able to immediately respond.

Even before Ike made landfall, Coast Guard helicopters had rescued 103 people in the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston Island, some from roofs and others from cars, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ayla Stevens.

Steven Rushing, a commercial fishmerman, tried to ride out the storm with his wife and several family members, including his pregnant 17-year-old daughter, in their one-story brick home on Galveston Island.

Early Saturday, they watched the water rise and donned life jackets. When the water reached the TV, about 4 feet high, Rushing's plan was to kick out a window so they could tie themselves to a tree and await rescue.

But then he noticed a sudden calm, apparently the hurricane's eye passing over. He loaded his family into a 17-foot ski boat and headed for the San Luis resort, the headquarters for emergency personnel about 20 blocks away. It took 20 minutes to float 16 blocks before the boat ran aground. Then the Rushings sprinted for safety, guided by lights from police responding to a 911 call made from the boat.

"I'm drained. I'm beat up," Rushing said later Saturday morning. "My family is traumatized. I kept them here, promising them everything would be alright, but this is the real deal and I won't stay no more."

Some 30 miles inland, storm surge pushing up through Galveston Bay was sending water into a neighborhood near Johnson Space Center where Houston Mayor Bill White had made rounds earlier with a bullhorn trying to compel people to leave. Nearby, the popular Kemah Boardwalk at the mouth of Galveston Bay, ringed by million-dollar homes, was submerged, state officials said.

Across Houston's downtown, car alarms screeched and light poles swayed like small trees.

The restaurant Brennan's of Houston, a downtown institution for more than four decades, was destroyed by flames. Fire officials said a restaurant worker and his young daughter were taken to a hospital in critical condition with burns over 70 percent of their bodies.

Before it came ashore, the storm was 600 miles across. Because of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its largely unprotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall of water two stories high - 20 to 25 feet - at the coast.

But there was some good news: a stranded freighter with 22 men aboard made it through the brunt of the storm safely, and a tugboat was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County gave birth to a baby girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades.

"It's kind of like riding a bike," Dr. Mark Burns told the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung after he helped Ku Paw welcome her fourth child.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5 million prepackaged meals were being sent to the region, along with more than 230 generators and 5.6 million liters of water. At least 3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana.

If Ike is as bad as feared, the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston. The port is the nation's second-busiest, and is an economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products.

The storm also could force water up the seven bayous that thread through Houston, swamping neighborhoods so flood-prone that they get inundated during ordinary rainstorms.

The oil and gas industry was closely watching Ike because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages.

Ike is the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane.

On its way through the Gulf toward Texas, Ike spawned thunderstorms, shut down schools and knocked out power throughout southern Louisiana on Friday. An estimated 1,200 people were in state shelters in Monroe and Shreveport, and another 220 in medical needs shelters.

In southeastern Louisiana near Houma, Ike breached levees, and flooded more than 1,800 homes. More than 160 people had to be rescued from sites of severe flooding, and Gov. Bobby Jindal said he expected those numbers to grow. In some extreme instances, residents of low-lying communities where waters continued to rise continued to refuse National Guard assistance to flee their homes, authorities said.

No deaths were officially reported, but crews expected to resume searching at daybreak near Corpus Christi for a man believed swept out to sea as Ike closed in.

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