The ABC News affiliate in Houston carried a video of investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino confronting Texas governor Rick Perry about temporary “no-fly” zones for TV helicopters over parts of the Bolivar peninsula and west Galveston, the hardest hit areas. Later in the video, Dolcefino tells the ABC anchors:
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"You know, we hear about disasters in other countries—what was it, Burma, Myanmar—where they won’t let people in to see and you know, this is the state of Texas; this America. And we’re not trying to interfere with rescue and search operations, nor did anyone suggest we would be."

When asked why he thought the government was obstructing access, Dolcefino did not mince words:

"I don’t think they want us to see images that may remind people… of the images that we saw in New Orleans. I don’t think they want us to see the images that were seen in Waveland, Mississippi or Gulfport… I think that’s the reality; they do not want us to see yet, until they can control what we see and how we see it. And that is simply, at least in my career, unacceptable. Maybe a lot of reporters won’t say it, but I will. I think they do not want us to see images of potential fatalities that may be on land or on water".

But down here on Moss Lake, Hackberry, a town of some 3,000 people and with an average annual income of $37,336, the calculation had less to do with foolhardiness and more with protecting property and animals.

"Survivin' is the name of the game down here," says storm rider Ernest Welch of Hackberry.

In fact, many of the holdouts here share a common distrust of government, intensified by a spate of recent hurricanes and ensuing political maneuvering about who can rebuild.
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In Galveston, an attempt to allow residents to return to the island was scrapped Tuesday as I-45 piled up with frustrated residents wanting to survey the damage. Meanwhile, 15,000 Galvestonians who stayed were busy cleaning up after the storm, mostly in good spirits despite lack of water and sewer facilities.

"What's happening in Galveston right now is that people who stayed are putting tarps on their roofs and those who did what the government wanted can't get back to their homes to minimize further damage," says Eliot Jennings, Galveston's former emergency management director.

Last week, prior to Hurricane Ike hitting the Texas coast, Bill O'Reilly told his Radio Factor listeners that the dire warnings of Ike's potential damage and threats to life were "hype."
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Wonder how many of those Folks™ listen(ed) to Bill, and believe what he says isn't hype.

It's frustrating that the government can deliver $85 billion to bail out AIG, and they can't deliver ice in Texas," said Ben Smilowitz, executive director of the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP), a nonpartisan organization that monitors the nation's disaster response system.

In fact, while the federal government can deliver ice to disaster areas, it's chosen not to, under newly-revised FEMA rules. Instead, individual states and local governments are now tasked with purchasing, delivering and storing ice, even though they face tough logistical challenges in doing so, according to critics of the new policy.

Besides preserving food when electricity is out, ice is essential in maintaining temperature-sensitive medication and feeding formulas and keeping people cool in the aftermath of disaster, relief and support workers say.

Ike has blown all the way up into the Great Lakes region with devastating impact. Power has been knocked out and airports shut by gale-force winds up to 78 miles per hour. Days later, hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners remain blacked out, and casualties still mount. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has declared a state of emergency, with up to 2 million Ohioans still without power.

A repeat performance on election day could change the course of US history if paper ballots are not universally ready.

A bitter battle now rages here in the Buckeye State over whether the Secretary of State’s office should provide as many paper ballots as voters might want.

Under current arrangements, half or more of Ohio’s may show up to the polls and be forced to cast their ballots on electronic touch-screen machines. Of 5.4 million ballots cast in 2004, George W. Bush’s official margin of victory was less than 119,000 votes.