PHONES STILL OUT IN TEXAS COUNTIES CLOBBERED BY IKE

摘要

An estimated 26 percent of the households in eleven Texas Gulf Coast counties hit hardest by Hurricane Ike remained without landline phone service Tuesday, according to estimates based on Texas Public Utility Commission data. The Beaumont/Jefferson County area still had about 33,800 households without landline phone service, or 36.5 percent of the total households. Elsewhere, Galveston County had 25,200 households still out, 26.6 percent of the total. The other nine hard-hit counties included Fort Bend, 15,000 households (13.6 percent); Polk, 13,600 households (90 percent); Orange, 4,900 households (16 percent); Trinity, 3,800 households (66.8 percent); Chambers, 2,700 households (29.8 percent); Newton, 2,300 households (43.9 percent); Hardin, 1,800 households (10 percent); Houston [County, not city], 1,600 households (19.7 percent); and Sabine, 1,100 households (24.4 percent). All told, 105,800 of the 395,400 households in the 11 counties were still without phones. Elsewhere in the 50-county region affected by Ike, only about two percent of the households, on average, were still without landline phone service.