Mighty big pile of debris you've got there

That's a lot of debris.

If Ike were a football team, how many fields would it fill?

According to Coach -- er, Mayor -- Bill White, the storm would cover 390 football fields with debris stacked 6 feet high.

White called forth the startling visual on Wednesday to try to convey the immense damage Ike inflicted on Houston's 600-plus square miles.

"We're talking about a massive amount of debris and a tremendous amount of the personnel and resources," White said. "It is certainly the largest national disaster to hit Houston."

The hurricane brought down an estimated 5 million cubic yards of debris, White said. The city already has picked up about a third of it.

I've got to agree with the commenter on this who said "why not just round up to 400?" It's a much easier number to grasp. Be that as it may, the fact that the city has cleared about a third of it off the streets is mighty impressive.

There also has been progress on repairing traffic lights, White said, with 77 percent of the city's signalized intersections back in operation.

As of Wednesday morning, 549 intersections still were not working -- 341 of those were flashing reds, and 208 were out completely.

My own metric for this is the lights I encounter on a daily basis. I'm pleased to say that as of this morning, the lights at Greenbriar and Holcombe, and at White Oak and Heights Boulevard, are now working again. Still wating for Greenbriar at Rice Boulevard, and Greenbriar Shepherd at Bissonnet. Anyone else seeing progress on this?

Finally, there's good news on the power to the people front: CenterPoint is down to the last 4000 or so customers who are still in the dark. They may finally have this all done by the weekend. Hooray! And by now, almost all of them have cable and Internet, too. But for those who don't, who knows when they'll get it?

Comcast said 93 percent of its subscribers have service again after Hurricane Ike, but some customers say they are frustrated that the area's primary cable provider can't tell them when to expect their television, phone or Internet service to return.

The cable company has about 750,000 customers in the Houston area.

"We have assessed our plant and continue to work on the significant damage we incurred from the hurricane," Comcast said in a statement Thursday. "We are finding the loss of cable service continues to be severed drop lines caused by fallen trees or water damage."

[...]

Stephen Tew's West University Place home is among those still without cable. He said he has called Comcast about 20 times in the last few weeks and has received several explanations.

"Everyone I talked to had a different story," said Tew, who relies on Comcast for his land-line phone, Internet connection and TV service. "No one can give an estimate of when they'll have it fixed. With CenterPoint there were updates. You at least felt like they had a plan and were doing something."

It's got to be bad if they're being unfavorably compared to CenterPoint. Good luck, y'all.

UPDATE: Greenbriar at Rice is working! Now for Shepherd and Bissonnet...

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 03, 2008 to Hurricane Katrina