Texas holdouts urge Hurricane Ike to "bring it on!"

By Tim Gaynor

GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike may be taking aim for the low-lying coast of Texas, but grocery store worker Jacqueline Harris is staying put -- in a flimsy, wooden beach bar.

"If nature is going to come and get us, bring it on!" Harris said as she sipped a Bud light beer at the Poop Deck, a tavern a stone's throw from the sandy coastal strip thrashed by white-capped waves.

"Everything I own and love is on the island; I'm going down with the ship," she added.

Residents of vulnerable coastal areas like Galveston Island are under a mandatory evacuation order. They face 111 mile per hour (177 kph) winds and tidal surges of up to 20 feet (6 metres) if Ike makes landfall as a dangerous Category 3 storm as expected late on Friday.

Texas governor Rick Perry urged residents to heed evacuation orders in such low-lying areas of the Gulf of Mexico that face severe flooding from tidal surges and heavy rains.

Some have decided to stay, boarding up their windows and preparing to move to higher floors ahead of the storm's surge, which is tipped to top Galveston's 17-foot (5-metre) sea wall and flood the island from end-to-end by daylight on Saturday.

A Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Galveston in 1900 killed at least 6,000 people, making it the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

The manager of the Poop Deck Marie Aldrich-Creasy says she has no plans to leave. She has stockpiled batteries, candles and a few tins of food, but said would not be shuttering her bar, which faces the sea a few yards (metres) across a highway.