Saturday, September 13, 2008

3 DEAD - 4 MILLION WITHOUT POWER SO FAR

VIDEO - STATIONS

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FIFTH ANGEL: TO DOCTOR DOCTORIAN

Then I saw the last angel flying over North and South America - all the way from the North Pole down to Argentina. From the east of the U.S.A. to California. I saw in his hand a bowl. The angel said he would pour out over these countries the judgments that were in the bowl. Then I heard the angel say, No justice anymore. No righteousness. No holiness. Idolatry. Materialism. Drunkenness. Bondage of sin. Shedding of innocent blood - millions of babies being killed before they are born. Families are broken. An adulterous generation. Sodom and Gomorrah is here. The days of Noah are here. False preachers. False prophets. Refusing of my love. Many of them have the imitation of religion, but denying the real power.

When I heard all that, I begged the angel, Can you not wait for a little while? Don't pour it. Give a chance for repentance. The angel said, Many times God has spared and has spoken, but they have not listened. His patience has come to an end. Beware, the time has come. They have loved money and pleasure more than they have loved Me. As the angel began to pour from the bowl in his hand, I saw tremendous icebergs melting. When that happened I saw floods all over Canada and North America -all the rivers flood; destruction everywhere. I heard the world market collapsing with mighty earthquakes, and New York skyscrapers were tumbling - millions dying.

I saw ships in the ocean sinking. I heard explosions all over the north country. I saw the angel pouring over Mexico and two oceans joining together- the Atlantic and the Pacific. A great part of north Brazil covered with water, the Amazon River turning into a great sea. Forests destroyed and flooded. Major cities in Brazil destroyed; earthquakes in many places. As the angel poured, great destruction took place in Chile and Argentina as never before. The whole world was shaking. Then I heard the angel say, This will happen in a very short time. I said, Can't you postpone? Don't pour these things out all over the globe. And suddenly I saw the five angels standing around the globe lifting up their hands and their wings towards heaven and saying, All glory to the Lord of heaven and earth. Now the time has come and He will glorify His Son. The earth shall be burned and destroyed. All things shall pass away. The new Heaven and New Earth shall come. God shall destroy the works of the devil forever. I shall show My power - how I will protect My children in the midst of all this destruction.

ISAIAH 13:6-7 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)

2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

AT LEAST 3 PEOPLE ARE DEAD AND 4 MILLION WITHOUT POWER AS IKE SWAMPED TEXAS WITH 10-20 FOOT WAVES, FIERCE WIND AND RAIN. AND THE STORM IS NOT OVER YET AS OF 9:30 AM.

WELL I'D SAY GODS WORDS ARE COMING TO PASS BIGTIME. GAS EVEN WENT UP 50-60 CENTS A GALLON IN SOME PLACES OVER NIGHT.

Nearly 3M people without power as Ike hits Sat Sep 13, 4:05 AM ET 9:30 AM UPDATE

HOUSTON - Nearly 3 million people are without power in the Houston area as Hurricane Ike slams the Texas coast. It will likely be a while before electricity returns. CenterPoint Energy says it could take weeks before all the power in the nation's fourth-largest city was restored.Utility spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said 1.3 million customers — or about 2.9 million people — had lost power by the time the storm made landfall at Galveston early Saturday. Work crews were coming in Monday to restore power, and priority will be given to hospitals, fire and police departments and water and sewage treatment plants.The city's last direct hit from a hurricane came from Alicia in 1983, when 750,000 CenterPoint customers lost power. It took 16 days to restore all service.

Hurricane Ike slams Texas coast with major floods By JUAN A. LOZANO and CHRIS DUNCAN, Associated Press Writers SEPT 13 AM 9:30 AM UPDATE.

GALVESTON, Texas - Massive Hurricane Ike ravaged southeast Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and ferocious wind gusts as residents who decided too late they should have heeded orders to evacuate made futile calls for rescue. It remained unclear before daybreak how many people may have perished as the worst of Ike was passing over the Houston-Galveston area. But even before the storm had passed and daylight had arrived, damage was already considered extensive. Thousands of homes and government buildings had flooded, roads were washed out, 2.9 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated as crews could not reach them. But the biggest fear was that tens of thousands of people had defied orders to flee and would need to be rescued from submerged homes and neighborhoods.The unfortunate truth is we're going to have to go in ... and put our people in the tough situation to save people who did not choose wisely. We'll probably do the largest search and rescue operation that's ever been conducted in the state of Texas, said Andrew Barlow, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry.Several fires were burning untended across Houston and 911 operators received about 1,250 calls in 24 hours, said Frank Michel, spokesman for Houston Mayor Bill White.Streets around the city's theater district became rushing streams and shards of glass fell from the sparkling skyscrapers that define the skyline of America's fourth-largest city. Winds were estimated to be 20-30 mph faster at the top of the steel and glass towers than at ground level.

The stubborn storm remained a Category 2 hurricane with winds topping 100 mph, but started moving away from Houston on Saturday morning. It was about 15 miles east-northeast of Houston Intercontinental Airport at 7 a.m. EDT and was expected to turn toward Arkansas later in the day.The eye of the storm powered ashore at 3:10 a.m. EDT at Galveston with 110 mph winds, just shy of a Category 3 storm. Because Ike was so huge — nearly as big as Texas itself — hurricane winds pounded the coast for hours before landfall and would continue through much of the morning, with the worst winds and rain after the center came ashore, forecasters said.For us, it was a 10, Galveston Fire Chief Mike Varela said when asked to compare Ike to earlier hurricanes like 2005's Rita. Varela said firefighters responded to about 60 rescue calls before suspending operations around 8 p.m. Friday.More than 1.3 million customers — or 2.9 million people — had lost power, and suppliers warned it could be weeks before all the service was restored. The only parts of Houston with power were downtown and the massive medical center section.Though 1 million people fled coastal communities near where the storm made landfall, authorities in four counties alone said roughly 140,000 ignored mandatory evacuation orders. Other counties were unable to provide numbers but officials were concerned many had stayed behind.We don't know what we are going to find, Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. We hope we will find the people who are left here alive and well.As the front of the storm moved into Galveston, fire crews rescued nearly 300 people who changed their minds and fled at the last minute. Six feet of water had collected in the Galveston County Courthouse in the island's downtown, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston was flooded, according to local storm reports on the National Weather Service's Web site.Even before Ike made landfall, Coast Guard helicopters had rescued 103 people in the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston Island, some from roofs and others from cars, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ayla Stevens.Some 30 miles inland, storm surge pushing up through Galveston Bay was sending water into a neighborhood near Johnson Space Center where White, the Houston mayor, had made rounds earlier with a bullhorn trying to compel people to leave. Nearby, the popular Kemah Boardwalk at the mouth of Galveston Bay, ringed by million-dollar homes, was submerged, state officials said.Thousands of homes could be damaged, a spokesman for the mayor said, but it was too dangerous to go out to assess the neighborhood at the height of the storm.Across Houston's downtown, car alarms screeched and light poles swayed like small trees.The restaurant Brennan's of Houston, a downtown institution for more than four decades, was destroyed by flames when firefighters were thwarted by high winds. Fire officials said a restaurant worker and his young daughter were taken to a hospital in critical condition with burns over 70 percent of their bodies.

On the far east side of Houston, 34-year-old Claudia Macias was awake with her newborn and trying not to think about the trees swaying outside her doors or the wind vibrating through her windows. I don't know who's going to sleep here tonight, maybe the baby, she said. Before it came ashore, the storm was 600 miles across. Because of the hurricane's size, the state's shallow coastal waters and its largely unprotected coastline, forecasters said the biggest threat would be flooding and storm surge, with Ike expected to hurl a wall of water two stories high — 20 to 25 feet — at the coast. But there was some good news: a stranded freighter with 22 men aboard made it through the brunt of the storm safely, and a tugboat was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County gave birth to a baby girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades. It's kind of like riding a bike, Dr. Mark Burns told the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung after he helped Ku Paw welcome her fourth child. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 5.5 million prepackaged meals were being sent to the region, along with more than 230 generators and 5.6 million liters of water. At least 3,500 FEMA officials were stationed in Texas and Louisiana. If Ike is as bad as feared, the storm could travel up Galveston Bay and send a surge up the Houston Ship Channel and into the port of Houston. The port is the nation's second-busiest, and is an economically vital complex of docks, pipelines, depots and warehouses that receives automobiles, consumer products, industrial equipment and other cargo from around the world and ships out vast amounts of petrochemicals and agricultural products. The storm also could force water up the seven bayous that thread through Houston, swamping neighborhoods so flood-prone that they get inundated during ordinary rainstorms. The oil and gas industry was closely watching Ike because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of shortages. Ike is the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston, it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage. Houston has since then seen a population explosion, so many of the residents now in the storm's path have never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane. On its way through the Gulf toward Texas, Ike spawned thunderstorms, shut down schools and knocked out power throughout southern Louisiana on Friday. An estimated 1,200 people were in state shelters in Monroe and Shreveport, and another 220 in medical needs shelters. In southeastern Louisiana near Houma, Ike breached levees, and flooded more than 1,800 homes. More than 160 people had to be rescued from sites of severe flooding, and Gov. Bobby Jindal said he expected those numbers to grow. In some extreme instances, residents of low-lying communities where waters continued to rise continued to refuse National Guard assistance to flee their homes, authorities said.

No deaths were officially reported, but crews expected to resume searching at daybreak near Corpus Christi for a man believed swept out to sea as Ike closed in.
Juan A. Lozano reported from Galveston. Chris Duncan reported from Houston. Associated Press writers Jim Vertuno and Jay Root in Austin, Eileen Sullivan in Washington, Schuyler Dixon and Paul Weber in Dallas, John Porretto, Monica Rhor and Pauline Arrillaga in Houston, Michael Kunzelman in Lake Charles, La., Brian Skoloff in West Palm Beach, Fla., April Castro and Andre Coe in College Station, and Allen G. Breed and video journalist Rich Matthews in Surfside Beach also contributed.

Hurricane Ike punishing Texas coast By Chris Baltimore and Anna Driver
SEPT 13,08 9:30 AM UPDATE.


HOUSTON, Sept 13 - (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike barreled into the densely populated Texas coast near Houston early on Saturday, bringing with it a wall of water and ferocious winds and rain that flooded large areas along the Gulf of Mexico and paralyzed the fourth-largest U.S. city. Ike, which has idled more than a fifth of U.S. oil production, came ashore at the barrier island city of Galveston as a strong Category 2 storm at 2:10 a.m. CDT (3:10 a.m. EDT) with 110 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said.Ike barreled through the Gulf of Mexico for days and covered a vast area extending hundreds of miles (km) when it slammed into the Texas coast. It is the biggest storm to hit a U.S. city since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.The hurricane drove a wall of water over Galveston and submerged a 17-foot sea wall built to protect the city after a 1900 hurricane killed at least 8,000people. More than half of its 60,000 residents had fled and emergency operations were suspended through the storm.About 50 miles inland, Ike lashed downtown Houston's glass-covered skyscrapers, blowing out windows and sending debris flying through water-clogged city streets.The storm was downgraded to a Category 1 on the hurricane intensity scale at 8 a.m. CMT (9 a.m. EDT) carrying top sustained winds near 90 mph and moving north, but officials said it was too soon to assess the damage.Texas officials were waiting for a break in the weather to deploy a search and rescue operation.

We expected a major storm and our expectations unfortunately came true, said Mark Miner, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The weather needs to clear up a little bit to see just what the devastation was.The hurricane has shut down 17 oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, the heart of the U.S. oil sector where 22 percent of fuel supplies are processed. Energy experts said it would take at least a week for the refineries to get back to normal.Houston was dark Saturday morning except for downtown and the Texas Medical Center, which are fed by underground power sources, Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said in an e-mail. Nearly all 2 million customers, or 4.5 million people, in the Houston-Galveston area were without power, he said.This is a huge storm that is causing a lot of damage, not only in Texas, but also in parts of Louisiana, U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday.He said the government would monitor gas prices to prevent extraordinary price increases because of Ike.(Additional reporting by Eileen O'Grady, Erwin Seba and Bruce Nichols and Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Writing by Mary Milliken; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Bush: Hurricane Ike is huge storm By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
SEPT 13,08 9:30 AM UPDATE.


WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday that Hurricane Ike was a huge storm that had caused extensive damage in Texas and parts of Louisiana. The storm has yet to pass and I know there are people concerned about their lives, Bush said in remarks from the South Lawn of the White House after he participated in video conference with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and David Paulison, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Some people didn't evacuate when asked, Bush said about the tens of thousands of people who may have to be rescued. I've been briefed on the rescue teams there in the area. They're prepared to move as soon as weather conditions permit. Obviously, people on the ground there are sensitive to helping people and are fully prepared to do so.Ike ravaged southeast Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and high wind. Thousands of homes and government buildings are flooded, roads are washed out, nearly 3 million people lost power and several fires burned unabated.Though roughly 1 million people fled coastal communities, authorities in four counties alone said roughly 140,000 ignored mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind. Other counties were unable to provide numbers but officials said they were concerned that many decided to brave deadly conditions rather than flee.Bush said that the government has suspended Environmental Protection Agency waivers on some reformulated gasoline to make it easier for foreign imports to reach the U.S. market.In the meantime, the Department of Energy and state authorities will be monitoring a gasoline crisis so consumers are not being gouged, Bush said.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush says Hurricane Ike is a huge storm that has caused a lot of damage in Texas and parts of Louisiana.Bush said Saturday morning at the White House that he just had a video conference with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and disaster relief agency chief David Paulison. He says Chertoff will go to Texas when weather permits to help coordinate state, local and federal recovery efforts.The president noted that some people did not evacuate ahead of the storm even when authorities recommended it. He says rescue teams are prepared to get started once conditions are better.Bush also says officials are keeping tabs on a gasoline crisis so consumers are not gouged at the pump.

Bush lifts restrictions on imported fuel due to Ike SEPT 13,08

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush announced on Saturday restrictions on imported gasoline had been suspended in response to Hurricane Ike which had forced companies to abandon oil refineries off the coast of Texas. Last night we suspended EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) waivers on certain reformulated gasoline, which will make it easier for imports from abroad to make it into our markets, Bush told reporters outside the White House as the powerful hurricane caused flooding on the Texas coast.

SoCal train wreck death toll rises to 17 By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press Writer SEPT 13,08

LOS ANGELES - Emergency crews found more victims early Saturday, boosting the death toll to 17, as they delicately picked apart the mangled wreckage of a commuter train that collided head-on with a freight train on the same track. More victims were feared trapped in the wrecked Metrolink commuter train. About 135 people were injured.The impact rammed the Metrolink engine backward into a passenger car, which rested on its side with the engine still inside it early Saturday, and accordioned the freight train cars. Two other Metrolink cars remained upright. Crews had to put out a fire under part of the train.It was the deadliest U.S. passenger train accident in 15 years,During the night, the teams used hydraulic jacks to keep the passenger car from falling over and other specialized rescue equipment to gently tear apart the metal.Fire Capt. Steve Ruda said the goal was to eliminate every piece of metal and gradually work down into the passenger spaces, but by midnight crews were just getting through the top deck of the double-decker train.There's human beings in there and it's going to be painstaking to get them out, Ruda said. They'll have to surgically remove them.His firefighters had never seen such carnage, he said. The crews would have to work carefully to document the incident for investigators and so relatives could identify bodies, Ruda said.Officials say there were 222 people on the Metrolink train and four Union Pacific employees aboard the freight train.The cause of the collision had not been determined.This is the worst accident I've ever seen, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. Clearly the injuries are going to mount and so are the fatalities.

Asked how the two trains ended up on the same track, Steven Kulm, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration: We are nowhere near having any information on that.Kulm said the federal investigation will be headed by the National Transportation Safety Board, while his agency will conduct a review of whether any federal rail safety regulations were violated.Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said it is common in California for freight and commuter trains to be on one track.

You see it a lot in California where commuter trains share tracks with freight trains," Richmond said, adding she couldn't speculate about the cause of the crash.

Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director for the city Fire Department, said 135 people were taken to hospitals — about 85 of them in serious or critical condition.In the initial hours after the disaster, firefighters treated the injured at three triage areas near the wreck, and helicopters flew in and out of a nearby landing area on evacuation flights. Dazed and injured passengers sat on the ground and wandered about.Leslie Burnstein saw the crash from her home and heard screams of agony as she ran through a haze of smoke toward the wreckage. She pulled victims out one by one.

It was horrendous, said Burnstein, a psychologist. Blood was everywhere. ... I heard people yelling, screaming in pain, begging for help.Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said the Metrolink train left Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and was headed northwest to Moorpark in Ventura County. The trains collided at about 4:30 p.m. in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley, near a 500-foot-long tunnel underneath Stoney Point Park. On the north side of the tunnel, there is a siding, a length of track where one train can wait for another to pass, Tyrrell said. I do not know what caused the wreck, said Tyrrell who broke down crying and was shaking. Obviously two trains are not supposed to be on the same track at the same time.Until Friday, the worst disaster in Metrolink's history occurred on Jan. 26, 2005, in suburban Glendale when a man parked a gasoline-soaked SUV on railroad tracks. A Metrolink train struck the SUV and derailed, striking another Metrolink train traveling the other way, killing 11 people and injuring about 180 others. Juan Alvarez was convicted this year of murder for causing the crash. That was the worst U.S. rail tragedy since March 15, 1999, when an Amtrak train hit a truck and derailed near Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 11 people and injuring more than 100. The Sunset Limited was involved in the worst accident in Amtrak's 28-year history. On Sept. 22, 1993, 42 passengers and five crew members died when the train plunged off a trestle into a bayou near Mobile, Ala. The trestle had been damaged minutes earlier by a towboat. Associated Press writers Greg Risling, Denise Petski, Josh Dickey, James Beltran, John Rogers and Michael R. Blood contributed to this report.

Russians troops pack up, leave western Georgia By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer SEPT 13,08

TBILISI, Georgia - Hundreds of Russian forces packed up and withdrew from positions Saturday in western Georgia, and a Georgian official said Russia had met a deadline for a partial pullout a month after the war between the two former Soviet republics.

Russian soldiers and armored vehicles rolled out of six checkpoints and temporary bases in the Black Sea port of Poti and other areas nearby, Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said.They have fulfilled the commitment to withdraw from the area by Sept. 15 under an agreement European Union leaders reached with Russia last week, Lomaia told The Associated Press.But he stressed that Georgia — like the West — demands a full Russian withdrawal to pre-conflict positions, in accordance with a cease-fire deal brokered by the European Union a month ago.Adding to tension, Georgian authorities said a Georgian policeman at a post near Abkhazia was killed Saturday by gunfire that came from the direction of a position where Abkhazian and Russian forces have been based.Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko confirmed the pullback in western Georgia.Right now the withdrawal of our peacekeeping forces is happening from these posts, Nesterenko said in televised comments.Lomaia said some 1,200 Russian servicemen still remain at 19 checkpoints and other positions, 12 outside South Ossetia and seven outside Abkhazia. Russia said it would pull them out by Oct. 11 as long as 200 European Union observers are deployed to strips of territory surrounding the two separatist regions by Oct. 1.

Russia is pushing to keep Western monitors outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia themselves, saying the EU observers' job is to protect the regions against Georgian aggression. The United States and EU, however, want to ensure security amid high ethnic tensions following the war.The presence of Russian troops deep in undisputed Georgian territory more than a month after the fighting ended has deeply angered Georgians and been an enormous sore point between Russia and the West.Russia's military campaign in Georgia and its subsequent recognition of Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent nations has plunged its relations with the United States and Europe into their worst crisis since the Cold War.An Associated Press television crew saw Russian soldiers pack military trucks before dawn Saturday with blankets and other supplies at a post by a road leading to Abkhazia province. Among the items taken down — the Russian tricolor flag.Four trucks stood packed and ready to leave the post in the village of Pirveli Maisi, along with an armored personnel carrier. A Russian column about the same size rolled past on a road leading to Abkhazia.Russian forces left the two posts they had maintained for weeks on the outskirts of Poti, one by a bridge on a main road leading into the city and one a few kilometers (miles) from Georgia's main port and devastated naval base, Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said.Russian forces have withdrawn completely from Poti, he said.

A third Russian post established more recently by the port of Poti had also been vacated, Lomaia said. He said some 250 soldiers and 20 armored vehicles pulled out of their positions and headed toward Abkhazia.Near the de facto border with Abkhazia, an Associated Press photographer saw several small columns of Russian armor crossing a bridge leading toward the breakaway region and military trucks heading across another bridge at a separate location.The brazen presence in Poti has been particularly galling for Georgia because it is hundreds of kilometers (miles) from South Ossetia, where the war broke out and where most of the fighting occurred.

In Vienna, confidential OSCE documents seen by The Associated Press revealed that Russian forces and their separatist militia allies were deliberately keeping OSCE monitors — who are separate from the planned EU mission — out of South Ossetia, where large numbers of Georgian homes have been looted and burned down. Russia has also said the EU observers will not be welcome inside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, only in the strips of land surrounding them. The EU and Georgia want the observers to have access to the separatist regions themselves. Western governments also say Moscow's plans to maintain 7,600 troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for the long term violates a provision in the cease-fire calling for both sides to return to positions held before the conflict erupted. Georgian troops tried to retake South Ossetia by force on Aug. 7, but were quickly repelled by Russian tanks, troops and warplanes. The Russian military then drove deep into Georgia, occupying large swaths of territory before an initial withdrawal in late August. The five-day war killed hundreds of people and drove nearly 200,000 people from their homes.

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