Not all residents persuaded to flee

SURFSIDE BEACH, Texas (AP) — At first, even the threat of “certain death” was not enough to persuade Bobby Taylor to flee this small town directly in the path of Hurricane Ike.

His wife, Elizabeth, had already decided to leave before police drove a dump truck through flooded streets, urging people to get out. Those who refused were told to write their names on their arms in black marker, so their bodies could be identified later.

Elizabeth came back to persuade her husband to leave and was waiting for him when he waded in waist-deep water up the main street, towing a blue kayak. She greeted him joyously. “Now I’ll pray for our neighbors,” she said.

More than a million people evacuated southeast Texas ahead of Ike. But citing faith and fate, tens of thousands more ignored calls to clear out, coastal authorities said. The National Weather Service warned that people in smaller structures in some areas “may face certain death.”

The choice to stay — always questionable, sometimes fatal — was an especially curious one to make so close to Galveston, site of a 1900 storm that killed at least 6,000 people, more than any other natural disaster in U.S. history.

By afternoon, Mayor Larry Davison said only one person was believed to be left in Surfside Beach, a Gulf Coast town of about 800 people 30 miles southwest of Galveston.

Davison said authorities had been told the man had left but later saw him on his porch. He had no phone.

“When we finally saw him, it was too late to get back in there,” the mayor said. “We had to retreat.”

A mandatory evacuation order was in place, but there were no signs anyone was being forcibly removed.

“We’re not going to drag them out of there and handcuff them,” Davison said. “They’ve made their decision.”