Hurricane Ike Fast Facts

Hurricane Ike was the third most expensive disaster in FEMA history, behind Katrina and Andrew, and resulted in the largest evacuation of Texans in our state's history.  It also became the largest search and rescue operation in history. More facts about Ike:
 
 
 

• Texas Baptist Men prepared approximately 1 million meals to those affected by Ike.  They also fed countless volunteers who helped in the recovery

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints provided more than 7,000 volunteers who did 50,000+ hours of labor.  They installed 1,000 tarps and cleaned up the property of more than 1,000 city and county first responders and their neighbors

• The SPCA rescued more than 1800 "Storm Pets" displaced by Ike and reunited more than 500 pets with their owners

• Interfaith Ministries served more than 48,000 meals even though their own offices had no power.  Volunteers from Volunteer Houston, Harris County Citizen Corps, the Ismailia community, and corporate partners such as Chevron, Exxon, Hewlett Packard, Grant Thornton, and the general public poured in to help with food distribution.  At one point there were more volunteers than food

• Besides the official Red Cross Shelters, many houses of worship opened their doors including Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, St. Paul's Missionary Baptist Church, Memorial Baptist Church, The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, The Lamb of God Lutheran Church, First United Methodist Church of Humble and the Vietnamese Dominican Sisters Convent.

• The largest donor to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund, the Hess Corporation, not only donated $3 million, but also some good old-fashioned elbow grease. Hess Corporation employees, along with LINC (Lutheran Inter-city Network Coalition) Houston employees, spent Nov. 21 in Galveston, removing damaged sheet rock from two houses, as well as taking on mold remediation in one.

 
If you have any facts about Ike you would like to share, please email the information, along with your phone number, to hurricanerecovery@cityofhouston.net