HACKBERRY, LA. - A convoy of National Guard trucks – flanked by Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife airboats and "Cajun special" flat-bottomed boats – pressed toward this small cattle town, fighting precarious winds, rough chop, and a snake-infested flood to reach hundreds of holdout farmers and roughnecks, many with no intention of getting rescued.

"About 300 stayed in Hackberry," says irritated Robert Swire, Cameron Parish sheriff's deputy, who is manning a checkpoint where Highway 27 disappeared under water some 20 miles from the Gulf. "They shouldn't have done that."

Hurricane Ike devastated much of Galveston, popped windows out of Houston high-rises, and left as many as 5 million people without power on its way to becoming what President Bush called "a major disaster."

But as the storm slowly crawled northward, rescue and relief crews faced a formidable task: Surveying more than 2,000 square miles of newly created sea in lower Louisiana and along the Sabine Pass on the Texas border, dotted with dozens of small towns, hamlets, and settlements.

While some 2.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana evacuated, more than 100,000 are estimated to have refused voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders along Ike's 200-mile surge zone.

The death toll to Hurricane Ike has risen to 28. (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

Midwest dries out
Further north across a waterlogged Chicago region, the rain has eased for the first time in more than two days, and forecasters predicted several days of drier weather ahead.

For Des Plaines Mayor Tony Arredia, any optimism that news brought was overshadowed by the prospect of hard work ahead for his flood-ravaged city.
The drier weather arrives as Chicago set one record for rainfall in a calendar day, 6.64 inches on Saturday, and approached setting a record for the amount of September rainfall—in just the first two weeks of the month.

Through early Sunday evening, 12.61 inches of rain had fallen at O'Hare International Airport this month. The record September, in 1961, saw 14.17 inches the entire month.

This weekend's rains alone were enough to cause widespread problems. (Source: Chicago Tribune)

Story Date: September 2, 2010