Rita no match for Katrina
2005-09-25 08:12
Port Arthur, Texas - Hurricane Rita whipped up deep floods, wrecked homes, shredded infrastructure and spawned fires and a killer tornado but could not match Hurricane Katrina's murderous march across the US Gulf Coast four weeks ago.
Rita clobbered Louisiana and Texas coastlines dotted with key oil refineries and chemical plants with howling 195 kilometres an hour winds and sheeting rain, leaving a trail of wreckage.
President George W Bush, still trying to escape Katrina's political shadow, surrounded himself meanwhile with senior military planners and rescue chiefs, and praised what he termed a vast, well run-response.
But new criticism flared over the messy evacuation of almost three million people, and some evacuees ignored pleas not to return to homes, in many cases blacked out by power cuts.
Authorities in central Mississippi reported the first known casualty, as one unidentified person was killed by a tornado spun off Rita, downgraded on Saturday to a tropical storm.
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 out of 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 left with 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 struck.
"It was pretty scary," said John Harrison, whose wooden home was ringed by a foot (33 centimetres) of water as dawn revealed damage wrought during a wild night.
Rescue workers tried to reach areas blocked off by debris and floodwater in the town where late rock legend Janis Joplin was born and raised.
Nine held for looting
Authorities held nine people for looting in the town and ordered a curfew to prevent an escalation of lawlessness, mayor Oscar Ortiz told CNN.
In Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi 1.14 million customers were without power and the number was expected to rise.
In Houston, frazzled evacuees started to trek home despite calls from Bush for people to wait for emergency response teams to do their jobs.
Some evacuees complained that the authorities did not do enough to prepare for the mass evacuation, even though troops, helicopters and trucks were on standby, and extra supplies of food and water were prepared.
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 surge's overtopped several patched up levees.
But despite the new round of flooding, Mayor Ray Nagin said he would resume his plan to repopulate the least affected city neighbourhoods, perhaps as soon as Monday.
"Katrina was the wash cycle, Rita was the rinse cycle. I hope we get time to hang on the line and dry and not go into the spin cycle," Nagin said.