Rescue helicopters and boats waited for dawn on Monday to resume their search for victims of Hurricane Rita in flooded Louisiana communities as the bill from the natural disaster mounted, although the death toll remained low.
After the thousand-plus dead from Hurricane Katrina, only two people were reported dead from Rita, though many people remained missing in small towns along the west Louisiana coast that bore the brunt of winds of 195kph and a 6m-high storm surge.
Military helicopters, coast-guard boats and volunteers who brought their own craft were to resume at dawn scouring the worst-hit towns and fishing villages cut off by floods.
Up to 2 500 people were rescued from Vermilion parish alone during the weekend, authorities said. More were saved in other western Louisiana districts from rooftops, and even some who scrambled up trees to get out of alligator- and snake-infested swamps.
One Vietnamese family rode out the storm on a shrimp boat in Intercoastal City. Many of the stranded used cellphones to call for help.
Rita ripped off roofs, sent trees flying into cars, fanned fires through historic wooden buildings and flooded low-lying towns, but the region’s vital oil infrastructure was relatively unscathed.
Oil prices fell in special trading in New York on Sunday as fears that Rita would ravage the network of refineries off the coast of Texas proved unfounded.
One million people remained without electricity, but state officials spoke of ”miracles” after studying the human toll.
Authorities in Mississippi reported one death from a tornado offshoot of the hurricane that tore up a mobile home. In Texas, one man was killed by a falling tree.
Twenty-four elderly residents of a Texas nursing home were killed when their bus caught fire on a highway during the evacuation.
But in Louisiana, which suffered most from Katrina on August 29, officials reported no immediate fatalities, though deaths were feared.
Sheriff Theos Duhon said he expected to find bodies as the search continued in Cameron parish.
”It’s a very grim picture … There are no fatalities so far, but I suspect there will be a few,” he said.
‘Don’t rush back’
Texas Governor Rick Perry said the low toll is ”a blessing” and praised what he called the largest evacuation in US history, which saw about three million people flee the Texas and Louisiana coasts before the storm.
Officials pleaded with the multitudes who fled in advance of the storm not to rush back, warning that the zone remains dangerous due to flooding.
President George Bush, who had led appeals for people to get away before Rita struck, joined the Texas and Louisiana governors in urging evacuees to stay in their refuges.
”The situation is still dangerous,” he said.
Risk Management Solutions, a leading US risk assessor, said on Sunday that insured losses from Hurricane Rita are likely to range between $4-billion and $7-billion.
”Hurricane Rita is comparable to last year’s Charley in that its damage is spread across a low population-density region of agricultural and fishing-related industries,” said Kyle Beatty, a meteorologist with Risk Management Solutions.
”There is also notable damage to offshore platforms, refineries and by-product industries of petroleum manufacturing.”
The president’s top economic adviser, Ben Bernanke, said in a speech to bankers that despite damage from Katrina and Rita, he remains ”pretty optimistic about the economy”.
But the White House Budget director, Joshua Bolten, said Monday that the government will have to tighten its belt and warned of wide-ranging spending cuts to pay for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast.
”We’re going to look at everything on the table,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Bolten urged Congress to begin by taking another look at Bush’s original Budget proposal for fiscal 2006 that targeted 150 programmes for elimination.
In New Orleans, a virtual ghost city since Katrina left it flooded and beaten, floodwaters stopped rising on Sunday as a levee, overwhelmed for the second time in a month, was patched up again.
Houston begins to bustle
Outside the Mediterranean Buffet in Houston, Isam Dimassi removed the wooden boards that shielded his restaurant from the monster that never came.
It was time to start cooking again.
Dimassi was back at work on Sunday as the nation’s fourth-largest city flickered back to life after Hurricane Rita: airports bustled, businesses reopened and traffic moved easily over freeways.
Officials dispatched buses to bring back thousands of evacuees from shelters.
”Everything is fine, you know, no problems,” Dimassi said. ”We were out of power for a little while, but it was back on this morning and we wanted to open.”
A day after Hurricane Rita spared Houston severe damage by veering east toward the Louisiana-Texas state line, skies were clear and the temperature soared to near 38 degrees Celsius.
It was the first day of a staggered re-entry plan drawn up by authorities hoping to avoid a rerun of the pre-storm evacuation, when stranded Houstonians and abandoned cars littered freeways after helpless drivers burned through gas in the gridlock.
Plenty of businesses remained closed, with windows taped or boarded up, as employees who scattered during Rita’s approach dribbled back home. But employers who rounded up enough workers gamely opened their doors.
At Pappas Seafood, a sign read, ”Come on in, open at 11. Incredible!” The marquee at Kenneally’s Irish Pub said: ”Rita who?”
A supermarket near downtown had long lines at registers 15 minutes after opening, despite a near-empty produce section and depleted packaged meat and dairy aisles.
”I was without power yesterday for about five hours, but now that it’s back on, I’m hungry and need some beef,” said Yvette Gatling, a 34-year-old lawyer, who got her wish at the meat counter.
On Sunday, only residents of the north-west quadrant of the city were encouraged to return, but cars streamed in elsewhere, sometimes with the complicity of officials.
Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on Sunday evening on a main highway leading into the city from the north, with a seemingly endless stream of charter buses, cars and sport utility vehicles clogging the highway and adjacent access roads.
Gasoline containers were strapped on the roofs of many vehicles, while officers stationed every few kilometres were helping stranded drivers.
The city’s two main airports, George Bush Intercontinental and the smaller William P Hobby, resumed service on Sunday morning. They were shut down on Friday as Rita bore down on the Gulf Coast.
Houston-based Continental Airlines was operating 249 flights out of the city, with plans to restore its smaller Continental Express and Continental Connection branches on Monday.
Lights blinked on in hundreds of thousands of homes. CenterPoint Energy, the main power provider for greater Houston, reported 300 000 customers without electricity on Sunday, down from 600 000 a day earlier.
More gas stations opened, with lines of motorists eager to fill their tanks.
Fuel shortages posed perhaps the biggest challenge to the massive exodus ahead of the storm. Cars were marooned on the main freeways out of town, and buses had to deliver evacuees to shelter.
Houston Mayor Bill White urged essential employees to return to work in the city, including people who work at grocery stores and gas stations.
”There is some fuel available in tankers, but they can’t deliver it if you’re not there,” he said. — Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP