Stories of Survival

Ray Wilkinson sat with his feet propped on the railing of his front porch Saturday, calmly dragging on a Marlboro Light as reporters asked whether he considered himself brave for being the only person to ride out Hurricane Ike on this spit of sand.

“I consider myself to be stupid,” Wilkinson, 67, spat through a thick, tobacco-stained beard. “I’m just tired of running from these things. If it’s going to get you, it’s going to get you. … “I didn’t say I had all my marbles, OK.”

The retired carpenter and former Marine insists he’s never

stayed for a hurricane that was coming at him. He says he fully intended to leave when police issued a mandatory evacuation. But the friend who was supposed to give him a ride went for a last-minute run to the store and couldn’t get back.

Mayor Larry Davison said city officials were told Wilkinson had left. But as they retreated from the flooded streets Friday, they saw him waving from the porch of the teal-colored stilt duplex he rents.

When Davison came back Saturday, he was shocked and relieved to see Wilkinson waving from the same spot, a tattered American flag flapping from the wall beside him.

“He kind of drank his way through the night,” Davison said.

Wilkinson—dressed only in shorts, tennis shoes and a ball cap

said he sat on the porch the entire time as the house swayed as much as 10 inches. He watched debris float by—cars, stairs and refrigerators, “my own being one of ‘em, damn it.”

“You all bring beer?” he asked reporters.

Wilkinson said he came to Surfside Beach 30 years ago after a

colon cancer diagnosis.

“I was supposed to be done with 10, 12 years ago—longer than that, actually,” he said. “I pretty well can guess this is where I’m going to go. That’s what I came down here for.”

HOUSTON (AP) — Downtown residents streamed onto streets littered with debris to take in the damage from Hurricane Ike even as glass from the 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower, the state’s tallest building, continued to crash to the ground, threatening to injure nearby gawkers.

“I think we’re like at ground zero,” said Mauricio Diaz, 36, as he walked outside the Post Rice Lofts across the street. Metal blinds from the tower dotted the street, along with red seat cushions, pieces of a wood desk and office documents marked “highly confidential.”

Diaz rode out the storm with his pregnant wife, Thais, 33, in their apartment on the ninth floor of the Post Rice Lofts across the street. Though their apartment was unscathed, some businesses inside didn’t fare so well.

The front windows of Sambuca restaurant and jazz club were demolished, as was a large arched window to the second-story State Bar.

David Foreman, director of operations for Sambuca, swept a giant squeegee back and forth across the floor, soaking up water. He spent the night in the business and all seemed fine until about 3 a.m., when the eye of the storm passed over.

“I was watching furniture come out of the 20^th floor of Chase,” said Foreman, describing something that sounded like “a bunch of beer bottles being broken by a bunch of people at the same time.”

Houston Police officer Joseph Ledet was patrolling the streets early Saturday, but stopped and simply stared as he approached the building.

BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) — Power was out and downed streetlights, power lines and broken glass littered the streets of downtown Beaumont after Hurricane Ike struck Texas on Saturday.

At the Orleans Street Pub and Patio nightclub, owners Sybil Hartsfield, 42, and Chris Lowrey, 29, rode out the storm when it made landfall.

The Category 2 storm tore a hole in their roof and allowed water to seep in and make it necessary to replace wooden floors inside.

“It was scary,” Hartsfield said. “The wind came through howling. The front doors were shimmying. We watched stuff blowing down the street.”

But they counted themselves lucky. The two women had just opened the club in April, three years after Hurricane Rita destroyed their old pub in another part of the city.

They plan to reopen once power is restored.

“Haven’t even had a grand opening yet and we’re already having

IRONTON, La. (AP) — Plaquemines Parish sheriff’s deputies in boats rounded up hundreds of horses and cattle from Hurricane Ike’s floodwaters Saturday.

“We woke up this morning about 4:30, and you could hear the

animals yelling outside. … They were getting separated from their

mothers, because their mothers could touch ground and they

couldn’t,” said Parish President Billy Nungesser,

He and another man waded and swam to herd the calves to higher ground across a highway.

“We’d get behind them, and they’d swim away from us and we’d swim them to the highway,” Nungesser said.