HOUSTON -- Hurricane Ike was downgraded to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon after battering the upper Texas coast as a monster Category 2 hurricane that came ashore on Galveston Island, creating devastation across southeast Texas, KPRC Local 2 reported.

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At 10 p.m. Saturday, the center of Tropical Storm Ike was located at 34.3 north and 93.9 west, or about 60 miles north of Texarkana. Its maximum sustained winds dropped to 40 mph, and Ike was moving north near 21 mph.

"Things are improving, as we can say. There is a clearing line behind it, so things are really going to improve," KPRC Local 2 chief meteorologist Frank Billingsley said. "A system is going to slide in, bringing in very nice air for us -- lots of dry air and very comfortable temperatures. At least as we go into a clean-up mode, we will continue to see quiet skies."

Billingsley said there is still a 60 percent chance rain for Sunday morning.

The National Hurricane Center said Ike packed winds of 110 mph when it made landfall.

"It brought 10 inches of rain, widespread from Montgomery County on toward Liberty County, back down through Houston area. I'm not sure we'll ever know exactly how much rain because so much of it was horizontal and did not get picked up into rain gauges," Billingsley said.

Preliminary reports showed winds reached 110 mph in Galveston.

"San Leon had 68 with gusts to 87, Hobby Airport had 75 and their gauge failed, so 92 mph gusts may have had higher at Hobby. Bush (Airport) had 56 with 70 mph wind gusts," Billingsley said.

The storm surge reached Category 4 hurricane status.

"Category 4 surge is 13 to 18 feet. Galveston Bay had 15 to 20 feet. Galveston Island had 12 to 14 feet. That seawall, which is right at about 15 feet -- if that surge had been any higher, there would have been more issues," Billingsley said. "Bolivar is still covered with water."

Galveston took a direct hit from the massive storm. Numerous buildings were severely damaged or destroyed, including the historic Balinese Room and the Flagship Hotel.

"The eye began coming ashore at 12:30 a.m. Saturday on Galveston Island," Billingsley said.

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The National Hurricane Center said the eye officially landed at 2:10 a.m. in Galveston.

Rescuers in boats, helicopters and high-water trucks set out across the flood-stricken Texas coast Saturday in a monumental effort to reach tens of thousands of people who stubbornly ignored warnings of "certain death" and tried to ride out Hurricane Ike.

The storm roared ashore hours before daybreak with 110 mph winds and towering waves, smashing houses, flooding thousands of homes, blowing out windows in Houston's skyscrapers, and cutting off power to more than 3 million people, perhaps for weeks.

By evening, it appeared that Ike was not the single calamitous stroke that forecasters had feared. But the full extent of the damage -- or even a rough sense of how many people may have perished -- was still unclear, in part because many roads were impassable.

Some authorities feared that this could instead become a slow-motion disaster, with thousands of victims trapped in their homes, waiting for days to be rescued.

"We will be doing this probably for the next week or more. We hope it doesn't turn into a recovery," said Sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Marlow in Orange County, where more than 300 people had to be rescued from flooded homes. He said that was only "a drop in the bucket" compared with the number still stranded.

By some estimates, more than 140,000 of the 1 million or so people who had been ordered to evacuate the coast as Ike drew near may have tried to tough it out. Many of them evidently realized the mistake too late, and pleaded with authorities in vain to save them overnight.

Ronnie Sharp, 65, and his terrier-mix Princess, had to be rescued from his trailer in Orange County when water reached his knees. "I was getting too many snakes in the house, otherwise I would have stayed," Sharp said. He said he lost everything in the flood but his medicine and some cigarettes.

After the storm had passed, National Guardsmen, members of the Coast Guard, FEMA representatives and state and local law enforcement authorities mobilized for what Gov. Rick Perry pronounced "the largest search-and-rescue operation in the history of the state of Texas."

Some emergency officials were angry and frustrated that so many people ignored the warnings.

"When you stay behind in the face of a warning, not only do you jeopardize yourself, you put the first responders at risk as well," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. "Now we're going to see this play out."

Steve LeBlanc, Galveston's city manager, said: "There was a mandatory evacuation, and people didn't leave, and that is very frustrating because now we are having to deal with everybody who did not heed the order. This is why we do it, and they had enough time to get out."

Because Ike was so huge -- some 500 miles across, making it nearly as big as Texas itself -- hurricane winds pounded the coast for hours before and after the storm's center came ashore. Ike soon weakened to a tropical storm as it made its way inland, but continued to pound the state with 60 mph winds and rain.

Officials were encouraged to learn that the storm surge topped out at only 15 feet -- far lower than the catastrophic 20-to-25 foot wall of water forecasters had feared.

Preliminary industry estimates put the damage at at least $8 billion.

Damage to the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants appeared to be slight, but gasoline prices shot up for fear that the supply would be interrupted by power outages and the time necessary to restart a refinery. In some parts of the country, gas prices surged briefly to $5 a gallon.

As the day wore on, hundreds of people were rescued from their flooded-out homes, in many cases by emergency crews that had to make their way through high water and streets blocked by peeled-away roofs, wayward yachts and uprooted trees.

But the day was already half over before the winds died down enough for authorities to begin the rescue, and the search was almost certain to be suspended before dark because of the dangers posed by downed power lines and flooded roads. A portion of hard-hit Galveston had yet to be examined.

The storm, which killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before reaching the U.S., was blamed for at least two lives in Texas. A woman was killed in her sleep when a tree fell on her home near Pinehurst. A 19-year-old man slipped off a jetty near Corpus Christi and was apparently washed away. Louisiana officials said a 16-year-old boy drowned Saturday after falling out of a fishing boat in Ike-flooded Bayou Dularge.

Lisa Lee spent hours on the roof of her Bridge City home with her husband, John, her 16-year-old brother, William Robinson, and their two dogs. They dove into 8-foot floodwaters and swam to safety after a sheriff's deputy arrived in a truck and drove as close to their home as he could. Their dogs paddled to safety behind them.

"It was like a dream," said William Robinson, while his sister shivered in a blanket at a shelter set up at a Baptist church in Orange.

A convoy of search-and-rescue teams from Texas and California drove into Galveston -- where the storm came ashore at 3:10 a.m. EDT -- after bulldozers cleared away mountains of debris. Interstate 45, the only road onto the island, was littered with large overturned yachts, dead pelicans and twisted debris from homes and docks.

Homes and other buildings in Galveston and homes burned unattended during the height of Ike's fury; 17 collapsed because crews couldn't get to them to douse the flames. There was no water or electricity on the island, and the main hospital, the University of Texas Medical Branch, flew critically ill patients to other medical center.

Sedonia Owen, 75, and her son, Lindy McKissick, stayed to shoo off looters. She was armed with a shotgun, watching floodwaters recede from her front porch. "My neighbors told me, `You've got my permission. Anybody who goes into my house, you can shoot them,"' Owen said.

President Bush declared a major disaster in his home state of Texas and ordered immediate federal aid.

In downtown Houston, shattered glass rained down on the streets below the JPMorgan Chase Tower, the state's tallest building at 75 stories. Trees were uprooted in the streets, road signs mangled by wind.

"I think we're like at ground zero," said Mauricio Diaz, 36, as he walked along Texas Avenue across the street from the Chase building. Metal blinds from the tower dotted the street, along with red seat cushions, pieces of a wood desk and office documents marked "highly confidential."

Southwest Louisiana was spared a direct hit, but Ike's surge of water penetrated some 30 miles inland, flooding thousands of homes, breaching levees and soaking areas still recovering from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav. Officials said the flooding was worse than it was during 2005's Hurricane Rita, which hit the Louisiana-Texas line.

But there was good news: A stranded freighter with 22 men aboard made it through the storm safely, and a tugboat was on the way to save them. And an evacuee from Calhoun County gave birth to a girl in the restroom of a shelter with the aid of an expert in geriatric psychiatry who delivered his first baby in two decades.

In Surfside Beach, retired carpenter and former Marine Ray Wilkinson became something of a celebrity for a day: He was the lone resident in the town of 805 to defy the order to leave. Authorities found him Saturday morning, drunk.

"I consider myself to be stupid," Wilkinson, 67, said through a thick, tobacco-stained beard. "I'm just tired of running from these things. If it's going to get you, it's going to get you."

He added: "I didn't say I had all my marbles, OK?"

City of Houston officials said they received about 1,250 911 calls in the past 24 hours, about 60 percent more than normal. Most of the calls were about fires or medical problems.

The Houston Fire Department had to stop responding to calls at about 4:45 a.m. Saturday, but by 9 a.m. was assessing what situations needed their attention the most.

Harris County officials asked residents to use bottled water to conserve the area's water supply.

"We want to focus on the water supply to make sure that it remains safe," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said. "There's no danger at this time that we know of."

The Harris County Flood Control District issued warnings for several rising bayous and creeks:

Armand
Berry
Buffalo
Clear Creek
Cypress Creek
Greens
Halls
Keegan's
Luce
Peach Creek
White Oak
Willow Watering Hole

The city of Houston's health department, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army were preparing to open shelters for residents who were not able to go back to their homes.

The Harris County Toll Road Authority closed the bridge over the Houston Ship Channel because of high winds. Officials also requested that drivers not use the East Loop bridge over the Houston Ship Channel.

Officials recommended residents stay indoors until the storm passes and be extremely careful when going outside because of downed power lines, weakened trees, contaminated flood water and other dangers that could be lurking.

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