Approaching Rita already causing havoc
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-24 08:55

"This isn't my first rodeo. All you can do is pray for best," she said as a driving rain started to fall. "We're surrounded by the people we love. Even if we have to all cuddle up, we know where everybody is."

In New Orleans, which had just drained nearly all the putrid floodwaters from Katrina, Rita's wind and rain sent water gushing through a patched levee along the Industrial Canal and into the already-devastated Lower Ninth Ward and parts of neighboring St. Bernard Parish. The water rose to waist level.

About the same time, water streamed through another levee along the patched London Avenue Canal, swamping homes in the Gentilly neighborhood with 6 to 8 inches of water.

"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry, a National Guardsman on duty at the broken levee in the Ninth Ward.

Refugees from the misery-stricken neighborhood learned of the crisis with despair.

An unidentified camera crew makes its way by boat through the newly flooded Ninth Ward in New Orleans September 23, 2005. Texas officials warned of catastrophe and an already devastated New Orleans suffered renewed flooding as weakened levees gave way in the hours before Hurricane Rita's expected strike at the U.S. Gulf Coast. [Reuters]

"It's like looking at a murder," Quentrell Jefferson said as he watched the news at a church in Lafayette, 125 miles west of New Orleans. "The first time is bad. After that, you numb up."

President Bush, mindful of criticism the federal government was slow to respond to Katrina, had planned to visit his home state to review the Rita response but canceled at the last minute to avoid slowing down the preparations. He planned to watch over the storm from the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs.

At least 2.8 million people fled a 500-mile stretch of the Louisiana-Texas coastline in a seemingly all-at-once evacuation that caused monumental traffic jams in which hundreds of cars broke down or ran out of gas. By midday Friday, the bumper-to-bumper traffic had cleared from the outskirts of Houston toward Austin and Dallas.

In a traffic jam on Interstate 45 near Wilmer, southeast of Dallas, a bus caught fire, killing as many as 24 people. Early indications were that mechanical problems caused the fire, and then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding in rapid succession.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 155 miles southeast of Galveston, moving northwest at near 12 mph, and forecasters said it could weaken further become coming ashore.

The military sent cargo planes to evacuate hundreds of medical patients and others from Beaumont. Downtown Beaumont was all but deserted, with buildings boarded up and practically nothing moving but windblown plastic bags. On the horizon, covered in gray clouds, refinery torches belched black smoke.

Sherry Gates, whose husband is maintenance director of the Beaumont Hotel, planned to stay behind to protect the place from looters. The hotel, she said, can withstand whatever Rita brings. "This old girl," she said, "will see us out."

About 90 percent of Galveston's 58,000 residents had cleared out, with the rest left to the mercy of a 17-foot seawall that was built after a 1900 hurricane that killed 6,000 to 12,000 of the island's residents in what is still the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

"I'd rather die in my house than on the street," Linda Rieffannacht said as Rita's outer bands began pushing waves onto the seawall. "This way they will know where I am."

In southwestern Louisiana, which was on the vulnerable east side of Rita and expected to get the brunt of a 20-foot storm surge, water was already lapping over roads in coastal Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes by midday. High winds flattened sugar cane fields, knocked over old live oaks and lashed the low-lying landscape with driving winds.

In Lake Charles, home to the nation's 12th-largest seaport and refineries run by ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Citgo and Shell, nearly all 70,000 residents had evacuated. Several riverboat casinos that mostly serve tourists from Texas also closed ahead of the storm.

"We see these storms a little differently after Katrina," said city administrator Paul Rainwater. "We all realize that no matter how safe you feel ... you have to take it seriously, you have to plan."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said over 90 percent of residents in southwestern parishes, about 150,000 people, had evacuated. For those who had not, she issued a warning: "You need to find a safe place to be. It is not safe to find yourself stranded on the highway. Get to the highest ground or the highest building in your area."

Some residents of southwest Louisiana were headed to a shelter in Lafayette, joining evacuees from Hurricane Katrina who had been there nearly a month.

"I am thankful for my life and that we are all safe," said Blanche Edgarson, 53, of Plaquemines Parish, an area that was devastated by Katrina. "But I'm very depressed, and I don't know where we will go from here."

Because of the approaching storm, authorities called off the search for bodies from Katrina, and the death toll across the Gulf Coast stood at 1,079, including 841 in Louisiana.

With Katrina's missteps in mind, the federal response for Rita included the placing of disaster response teams in Houston, helicopters in Florida and a fleet of C-5 transport planes in San Antonio for evacuation duty. Five Navy ships, including two amphibious vessels with 800 Marines, were in the gulf awaiting orders.