Economic damage from Ike less than it could have been

A small change in Hurricane Ike’s course just before it crashed into the Texas coast may have spared the state and the nation from significantly worse economic damage.

The center of the storm appeared to miss the vital concentration of oil and petrochemical refineries in the Houston area, and the surge of water rolling into the nation’s second-largest port was also weaker than predicted.

“If the eye of that storm had been as much as 20 miles east, we would have a lot more havoc and damage than we did,” said Chris Johnson, a senior vice president at commercial property insurer FM Global.

Much of the region’s industrial recovery will depend on how quickly power companies can restore electricity; that, in turn, will depend on how quickly the utilities can get employees back to work.

“I received a call from one of my employees, who was evacuated to San Antonio. He was just informed that his house was totally destroyed,” said Bill Reid, the CEO of Ohmstede, which builds and repairs refineries. Reid, who lives in Kemah, Texas, about 35 miles south of Houston, said his town was without power and water, and still had 15 feet of flooding.

The port of Houston, the nation’s second-largest, was without power Saturday but expects to reopen Monday morning if the Coast Guard finds no obstacles in the shipping lanes. Some empty cargo containers were blown about, but not too far.

“All the terminals did very well and we had only very minor damage, like fencing being blown down,” said port spokeswoman Argentina James.

Refineries as far east as Louisiana were affected by the storm, however. The tourist island town of Galveston was flooded and office buildings in downtown Houston were damaged, but it could have been worse.

“It appears that, at least from our facility and operations standpoint, the impact is a little less than we did anticipate,” said Mike Smid, chief executive of trucking company YRC North America, which runs Yellow and Roadway lines. The company evacuated its 900 employees ahead of the storm.

Preliminary estimates put the damage at $8 billion or more, but a precise accounting of the storm’s wrath was far from complete.

Travelers Insurance had teams of adjusters, claims agents and logistics people with laptops and ladders in San Antonio who are planning to leave for Houston Sunday, said spokesman Matthew S. Bordonaro.

“It will be some time before we have any damage estimates,” said Mike Siemienas, a spokesman for Allstate Corp. “Our focus right now is to get into the hardest-hit areas once it is safe to do so.”