Hunt for Rita victims go on
2005-09-25 14:12
Port Arthur, Texas - Emergency teams searched flooded communities along the US Gulf Coast on Sunday after Hurricane Rita delivered deep floods, spectacular fires and a killer tornado, leaving behind wrecked homes and shredded infrastructure.
Local officials were concerned massive rain dumped by the storm could trigger flooding in a densely populated area covering northern Texas, Arkansas and the Mississippi River Valley.
"It could cause a catastrophic flooding event," said Jack Colley, the emergency management coordinator for Texas.
Rita clobbered the Louisiana and Texas coastlines dotted with key oil refineries and chemical plants with howling winds of 195 kilometers an hour and sheeting rain, in the early hours of Saturday.
Authorities in central Mississippi reported the first known casualty, as one unidentified person was killed by a tornado spun off the remnants of Rita.
No deaths were reported in Louisiana and Texas, though 24 elderly evacuees were killed in an explosion in a bus on Friday as they joined a mass exodus from the danger zone. An elderly woman also succumbed to heat exhaustion in a traffic jam.
The town of Port Arthur, Texas, close to where Rita's swirling eye came ashore, was awash in waist high floods, downed power lines and uprooted trees. Cars lay smashed on the streets and the main refinery was out of reach after the storm hit.
Authorities held nine people for looting in the town and ordered a curfew to prevent an escalation of lawlessness, Mayor Oscar Ortiz told CNN television.
In Louisiana, the entire town of Erath, population 2 100, was under four feet of water, rescue workers said. The Coast Guard said they had rescued 40 people in heavily flooded areas, despite battling tropical storm force winds.
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco told CNN 250 people had been rescued in Vermilion Parish, but as many as 1 000 more may need help.
Ruptured pipeline
Also, a chemical used in processing natural gas was reported leaking from a ruptured pipeline at Henry Hub in Erath, but local officials said the leak posed little danger.
In nearby Lake Charles, police and fire crews went on a house-to-house hunt looking for bodies - but found none.
There was widespread damage, the waters of Lake Charles were rising and a fierce wind blew off the lake, but the town was counting its blessings.
"It's not as bad as I feared ... We were fortunate," said the town's police chief, Don Dixon.
In Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi 1.14 million customers were without power and the number was expected to rise.
In New Orleans, a virtual ghost city after the Katrina catastrophe, water rose to 2.4 metres high in some areas already ruined by last month's storm, after flood surges overtopped several patched-up levees.
By early Sunday, a day after it rammed ashore, Rita was no more - downgraded by the National Hurricane Center to a nameless tropical depression.