History > 2006 > USA > Weather > Hurricane Rita

A year later, Rita's wrath lingers

Updated 9/25/2006 12:37 PM ET
By Alan Gomez
USA TODAY

CAMERON, La. — Some recall Hurricane Rita as the storm that just missed Houston. Others vaguely remember it as the one that came after Katrina.

The widespread anonymity of Rita has somehow reached the point where people along the Texas-Louisiana border — the ones whose towns and crops and neighbors were annihilated by Rita's 120-mph winds and 20-foot storm surge — have given Rita a new name: the Forgotten Hurricane.

"Nobody says anything about Rita. It's all Katrina, Katrina, Katrina," said Paul Martin, 47, whose home in southwestern Louisiana was washed away along with the other 35 homes in his neighborhood. "Hey, we lost everything too."

It was one year ago Sunday that Rita roared into the Texas-Louisiana border and devastated a swampy, brackish area dotted by wooden houses built long before hurricane building codes existed. About 100 people died either during the storm or trying to escape from it — including 23 seniors who died in a bus blaze during the chaotic evacuation of Houston.

Although Katrina cost more in lives and damage, Rita swamped a broad area. More than 600,000 homes across 85,000 square miles were damaged or destroyed, the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates.

Rita forced what could be the largest evacuation in U.S. history. Three million people fled in two states. Only Hurricane Floyd, which struck near Cape Fear, N.C., in 1999, comes close with an estimated evacuation of about the same number of people.

And while Katrina's $40 billion price tag is the largest for any hurricane hitting the USA, Rita ranked as the seventh-costliest storm, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Damage estimates for Rita from the institute are over $5 billion.

'Giant trash pile'

The area hit by Rita is dotted with shoreline communities that depend on shrimping and fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Venice still looks like a giant trash pile. Only the courthouse is still standing in Cameron," Debra Segura, a central Louisiana truck driver, said. "Holly Beach is wiped out. Delcambre is ruined."

Many of the hard-hit areas are on a slow track to recovery. People in those areas believe the storm's timing — hitting just four weeks after Katrina — is a big reason why that recovery has taken so long.

Shelters and apartments around Houston and southwestern Louisiana were already filled by Katrina evacuees, leaving few residents there to find temporary housing of their own. FEMA and insurance companies were already deluged with Katrina-related cases when Rita hit.

Martin said FEMA officials told him in January he would get a trailer in seven to 10 days.

"How about seven to 10 months?" he said. Martin received his trailer nine days ago, after spending the past year in a friend's apartment.

Louis Arceneaux, a Lake Charles, La., high school chemistry teacher, said the damage to his home was about $10,000. He had no flood insurance, and he moved in with his mother after the storm so he did not receive housing money.

"Rita broke me," he said. "I can't afford to teach anymore."

Insurance companies acknowledge that the two hurricanes put a strain on the insurance adjusters who were working long hours in harsh conditions — many of them who were helping Katrina transplants had to evacuate when Rita came ashore.

Even so, they point back to the summer of 2004, when Florida was hit by four hurricanes, as proof that they've learned to react to multiple storms in short periods.

Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, said 95% of Katrina-related insurance claims are settled. He said that number is "as high if not higher" for Rita.

FEMA says it has provided more than 15,000 travel trailers and given housing assistance to more than 450,000 people.

The Small Business Administration has granted more than $500 million in loans, the National Flood Insurance Program has given out more than $370 million in Louisiana, and FEMA has provided $360 million for cleanup in Texas.

Traffic nightmare

What Rita may be remembered for most is the evacuation. As it swelled to a Category 5 with a predicted path over Galveston and Houston more than 3 million people hit the roads almost simultaneously.

People were stopped in traffic for hours. Many ran out of gas waiting to get out. Some just returned home.

Joe Laud with the Houston Office of Emergency Management, whose wife and kids couldn't get out of Houston, said evacuating a major city is difficult. He conceded that government agencies along the evacuation routes need to work better to ease that traffic.

"Rita showed the dents in our armor," he said.

Laud said they've had several exercises to get traffic lanes moving away from Houston faster. Government officials are working with gas stations to ensure that some remain open during an evacuation. A task force created by Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested consolidating more power into his office for better statewide coordination.

So far, the calm hurricane season has allowed residents along the Gulf Coast to focus instead on the task of rebuilding.

Richard and Nancy Burbank are the first Constance Beach family to rebuild their home, a lone structure surrounded by 20-foot wooden silts that once propped up dozens of homes.

"If you live on the coast and you don't think hurricanes are going to hit you, you're stupid," Nancy Burbank said. "When I came back, I accepted what I saw and immediately wanted to rebuild."

For others, the decision isn't so simple.

Paul England, a welder at a Port Arthur, Texas, oil refinery who skins alligators on weekends, decided not to rebuild and to move 20 miles inland.

"I won't move back down here," England said. "Rita scared the hell out of a lot of people."

Contributing: William M. Welch in Los Angeles and Oren Dorell in McLean, Va

    A year later, Rita's wrath lingers, UT, 25.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-24-rita-anniversary_x.htm

Many in Louisiana, Texas lament Rita 'amnesia'

25.1.2006
USA Today

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — A steady procession of congressmen and U.S. senators have visited the Gulf Coast this month, inspecting Hurricane Katrina damage. But they didn't show up here, one of the places devastated by Hurricane Rita, Louisiana's "other" storm.

Four months after Rita caused $4.7 billion in damage, people in southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas say they're concerned the storm has been erased from the country's memory, overshadowed by Katrina's assault on New Orleans. While New Orleanians fret about "Katrina fatigue," people here say they've been victims of "Rita amnesia."

"We don't want anyone to lose sight of the things that have happened to coastal Louisiana because of Rita," said Randy Roach, the mayor of Lake Charles.

Rita hit Sept. 24, one month after Katrina, along the Texas-Louisiana line. Its 120 mph winds and 9-foot storm surge flattened the Louisiana coastal towns of Holly Beach and Cameron, and caused extensive damage further inland, in Lake Charles and Port Arthur, Texas. About 100 died in Texas, including 23 elderly people whose bus exploded during an evacuation.

Like Katrina, Rita was a Category 3 storm that received a lot of attention at the time. Amid fears of Katrina-like chaos, the media zoomed in on the massive traffic jams as people in Houston and southwest Louisiana evacuated northward as the storm approached.

Soon, the country's attention shifted back to New Orleans and Katrina.

"After four or five days of national news coverage, this was not a huge news story anymore," said Guy Goodson, Beaumont's mayor. "We did kind of fell off the radar, and that's a little disarming."

Roach said Katrina has overshadowed Rita for good reason. Katrina wrecked a major U.S. city, killed over 1,300 people and led to widespread looting, plus a bitter political spat between the Republican White House and Democratic Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

But Rita caused destruction very similar to what happened to New Orleans and coastal Mississippi.

Lake Charles, home to 72,000 people, has never had much in common with big city New Orleans. Now, the cities share a landscape of ruined refrigerators and wrecked roofs patched with blue tarps. Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas, look much the same, Goodson said.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in effect in Cameron, a town of 2,000. Electricity and water service are back, but most homes were washed away or are uninhabitable because of flood damage. People are allowed to move onto their properties if they can; however, the Federal Emergency Management Agency won't provide them with mobile homes until the sewage system is fixed. So few people have moved home.

A bleak drive around Cameron is brightened only by the sight of the occasional house that more or less survived. Rebuilding those homes is made more difficult because Rita destroyed the town's retailers — no place to buy nails, hammers, gasoline, food or drink.

Southwest Louisiana parishes face the same problems as New Orleans, but on a much smaller scale: How to get rid of tons of debris, how to bring evacuated residents back home, how to stop the false rumors that the government will force them to sell their land or bulldoze indiscriminately.

Not all residents are concerned if the rest of the country has forgotten what Rita did to southwest Louisiana.

"We're not complaining about any of that," said Howard Romero, a retired high school principal whose home in coastal Johnson Bayou was swept away by floodwaters.

"But you hear more about Katrina maybe because they complain more. We just go out and try to clean up and try to rebuild it. We don't have time to gripe about spilled milk. We know it's destroyed, it's tore up. We're going to have to rebuild, and that's that we're doing."

But elected officials said Rita amnesia has concrete consequences — the amount of federal relief the area receives.

Congress passed tax relief provisions and other benefits for areas affected by Katrina, but at least six — including debt cancellations, tax credits and tax breaks for those who took in people made homeless by the storms — were not extended to people affected by Rita.

Roach said it can be a delicate matter to make the case for federal assistance for those affected by Rita when so much death and destruction was caused by Katrina, whose victims are also clamoring for help.

"We really don't want to put ourselves in competition with Katrina. I don't think that's appropriate at all," Roach said. "At the same time, we don't want to be overlooked. We just want to make sure our story doesn't get lost."

    Many in Louisiana, Texas lament Rita 'amnesia', UT, 25.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-25-rita_x.htm