Update: New reports say over four million are without electricity.
For anyone who has been in Houston during a normal rain storm, you can imagine how tough it has to be today as Ike hits land. Latest from CNN:
Ferocious wind and floodwaters from Hurricane Ike severed power to 1.8 million customers in the Houston area early Saturday as the Category 2 storm made landfall on Galveston Island.
The storm's official landfall, with 110-mph winds, was at 2:10 a.m. CT, the National Hurricane Center said. But it began its assault on the Gulf Coast 18 hours earlier, pushing Gulf of Mexico floodwaters on to Galveston Island.
Winds aloft in the storm were even higher, and officials feared they could hit Houston high-rises extremely hard as it moves inland.
Richard Kotrla in La Marque, Texas, about eight miles from Galveston Bay, said early Saturday that Ike was "shaking this house pretty good."
My gazebo is a pretzel," Kotrla said.
Houston officials warned residents to stay put because it was no longer safe to try to escape.
Those who stayed were also largely in the dark.
Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said 1.8 million of the power company's 2 million customers -- or 4 million people -- in metropolitan Houston are without electricity as high winds and heavy rains downed power lines.
"It's going to take several weeks to get all this power restored," he said. "We've been saying two to three weeks."
