Will Ike mean fewer billboards?

One of the easily visible effects of Hurricane Ike is a lot of torn-down billboards. Looks like many of them may not go back up.

For billboards, the city ordinance says that if the cost of repairing the weather damage is more than 60 percent of the cost of erecting a new sign, the billboard comes down. For business signs grandfathered at sizes larger or taller than what is now allowed, the rule is similar -- those signs must be rebuilt smaller and conforming if the damage repair would cost more than 60 percent of the cost of building a new sign.

[Holly Eaton, program director of Scenic Houston,] said documenting weather damage is critical because "it's one of the few ways we can get these things down." Showing the city the damage avoids "sneaky, stealth-of-darkness repairs on signs that really should be coming down."

She'd collected photos or notice of at least 20 billboards with significant problems by Monday afternoon.

Susan Luycx, Houston's division manager for sign administration, said she had a dozen inspectors out on the streets this week "red tagging" hundreds of signs and billboards that are damaged enough to be a safety hazard. She said the city will take a look at other signs that citizens report.

Luycx said the city puts a reddish orange ticket or placard on the sign or billboard to identify it as storm-damaged so the owner and public know that a permit may be required if it is to be repaired or replaced.

But she and Alvin Wright, spokesman for Houston's Public Works and Engineering Department, said the billboards and on-premises signs are handled on a "case-by-case" basis.

Fine by me. I just know I'm seeing a whole lot more sky and scenery these days, and I like it like that.

It's Day 10 after Ike, and about one third of CenterPoint's affected customers are still without power.

[Spokesman Floyd] LeBlanc said CenterPoint's crews are working to restore line fuses, which serve 100 to 300 customers. Until those are back up, the crews can't identify failures in transformers -- the cylindrical devices on poles that typically affect fewer than 10 customers.

And when crews finish working on one fuse, they move to the next one -- not to the failed transformers -- in hopes of bringing a larger group of customers online.

LeBlanc said 8,200 line fuses went down in the storm and almost half are still out.

CenterPoint is not yet saying when transformer repairs will start.

The company says 11,000 workers -- including 8,000 who came from out-of-state utilities under cooperative agreements -- are working on the problem.

But some customers who want to know when power crews will arrive on their block say they aren't getting answers.

[...]

As of Monday night, CenterPoint said 713,000 customers, 32 percent, were still without power, down from nearly all of its 2.3 million customers immediately following the hurricane's landfall early Sept. 13.

Man, that's gotta suck. Our friend Andrea, who says her house is an island of darkness in a sea of restored power, is still with us because she's in that unlucky one-third. It's really frustrating for her.

I can understand CenterPoint's approach, but I'm a little amazed at how many traffic lights are still out. One of the dozen nonfunctioning lights on my commute was back up yesterday - it's the intersection of Greenbriar and Old Spanish Trail, which needed to be working for the Main Street rail line to operate. There were police officers directing traffic at some other intersections, which helps but is going to cost a bundle in overtime. Looks like this situation will continue into next week.

Out of the 2,500 signaled intersections in the city limits, the Department of Public Works and Engineering has repaired 1,300 and prioritized the repair of thoroughfares all over Houston.

City officials said they hope to have completed emergency repairs to signals within the next nine days.

And finally, possibly the least important story of Hurricane Ike:

Some salty language from a frustrated Mayor Bill White to emergency workers last week at Reliant Park has kicked up dust from Austin to Georgia.

After receiving a complaint Friday from Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, Gov. Rick Perry yesterday asked his staff to investigate comments White made to two Georgia Forestry Commission employees who came to Houston to help manage the distribution of federal and state supplies to area residents hit hard by Hurricane Ike. Perdue said in a letter to Perry that White had "verbally and profanely abused" the women.

A witness said White told the women, "You need to be getting these (expletive) trucks out of here."

The mayor then began arguing with a Harris County sheriff's deputy over whether trucks full of Federal Emergency Management Agency supplies had been delivered to a distribution site, the witness said. White told the deputy he had just been to the site and about 3,000 people were waiting for supplies.

White went on to say that if nothing was delivered soon, they were ''about to be in a (expletive) riot," the witness said.

In a written response to the two Republican governors, White said that he grew frustrated last Tuesday when he visited the distribution sites and found they had nothing to hand out to the thousands of people waiting in line.

"I did use words that I have never used in the Sunday school class I teach, but which were closer to the vocabulary General Patton used when he was trying to keep his army moving," White wrote. "I apologize to anyone who believed my anger was directed at them."

White was unavailable for comment Monday because he was on his way to Washington to ask Congress for federal aid, a spokesman said.

Oh, for crying out loud. Here, as a public service, is the apology I would have offered to Governor Perdue:

"I'm really [expletive] sorry that some people were offended by my harsh language. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got more important [expletive] things to do."

There. Happy now, Governor Perdue?

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 23, 2008 to Hurricane Katrina