Who knows what she will find. Maybe her home has been tossed onto its side by the hurricane, its expensive innards flung across the neighbourhood. Chances, though, are that the family home in suburban Houston will be just as Abbie Huckleby left it.
Hurricane Rita may have whipped winds up to 192kph, left a million without power and sheared off the front porch of at least one home in Louisiana, but the initial reaction as the United States surveyed Rita’s aftermath at first light on Saturday was a national gasp of relief. The sentiment was shortlived. Then everyone remembered Rita had precipitated one of the biggest civil evacuations in history, an exodus that last night saw families displaced in makeshift shelters hundreds of miles from home. Almost three million citizens like Huckerby remain stranded. In the face of acute petrol shortages and traffic chaos, Rita has provoked misery for millions.
The first signs of unrest surfaced on Saturday night amid criticism that too many people were forced to shift for a storm which although it left a million without power and flooded at least one city, never came close to mimicking the brutality of Katrina. Public safety officials are already wondering whether they can ever persuade so many to evacuate again.
Even as the Pentagon announced on Saturday night it was sending five mortuary teams into Texas, the situation remained that the huge evacuation had claimed more fatalities than Rita herself. Responding to orders to flee the coast, a bus carrying elderly passengers exploding late on Friday killing 24, the inferno intensified by oxygen tanks the patients needed to breathe.
Rita arrived as suddenly as she faded away. The first images of a white catherine wheel appearing on weather maps last Monday afternoon. As she moved west, so she grew. Experts at the Florida-based National Hurricane Centre started to describe ”a monster”.
Then came the news that the US, still in a state of near-panic from the aftermath of Katrina, had been dreading. Rita had outgrown her brutal predecessor; a 35 000 swirling vortex that could bring destruction to an area as big as that from London to Manchester was heading to the already ravaged Gulf Coast. Winds had reached 280kph. Rita was a category five, the most dangerous of all. And now she was heading for one of the most populous corridors of President’ Bush’s home state.
In Rita’s track lay Galveston, scene of America’s worst natural disaster, along with its fourth largest city, Houston. Not surprisingly Bush, seen strumming a guitar in the sunshine of San Diego on the morning New Orleans woke up submerged, seemed genuinely panicked. The sentiment was shared; calls for a mandatory evacuation wrought havoc.
By Thursday night, a large swathe of the central US was malfunctioning. Major airports were shut; freeways stationary as 160km-mile traffic jams built up. It is known at least 2,8-million fled Rita, many on mandatory evacuation orders. Red brake lights streamed out of Houston. Motorists complained of travelling six kilometres in 12 hours. Huckleby admitted ”screaming” as she sat still traffic as Rita approached. ”If I would have known it was this bad I would have stayed at home and rode out the storm” she said.
Then the fuel ran out. Drivers throughout the petrol-rich state of Texas were forced to push their cars to the side of highways after running out of gas. As Rita came within 240km of the Texas coast, the nightmare scenario of thousands left stranded on roads became a reality. Texas authorities begged the Pentagon for help in getting gasoline to drivers. In its eagerness to avoid the horrors that befell New Orleans, the world’s wealthiest nation had unwittingly orchestrated chaos in the heart of its president’s favourite state. As resident John Bridges would point out from the safety of a Houston barstool on Friday night: ”The real disaster is being stuck on the highway for 24 hours in 100 degree heat. It floods all the time.”
Now they are heading back, enduring similar gridlock and heartache.Yet what many experts appreciate is that the majority of hurricane fatalities do not occur from the initial storm rush, but the flooding that follows. Up to 20 inches are expected to fall on the Texas and Louisiana border this week.
When Rita finally struck in the pre-dawn darkness, it was to the crackle of exploding electricity transformers. Power lines felled by gusts of up to 192kph sparked a series of fires across the region, including the destruction of historic houses in Galveston. At hotels in Beaumont, close to where Rita came ashore, windows were reported blown through. Perhaps worst affected was the city of Port Arthur, which found itself submerged in waist deep water on Saturday after taking Rita’s force head on. Small flat bottomed boats were seen negotiating areas of deeper water for signs of the few who had stayed behind.
But the catastrophic devastation predicted never came. Rita veered towards the Texas/Louisiana border and away from the populous Houston region. Empty coastal highways and deserted towns were pounded with Rica’s most ferocious winds and rain. ”It looks like the Houston and Galveston area has really lucked out,” said Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane centre. CNN, who like the rest of the world’s media had spent days preparing bases at Galveston, where up to 12 000 died in a hurricane in 1900, likened the settlement’s escape as similar to ”dodging a bullet”.
Many though were most delighted by the reports of the glowing torches of the oil refineries off Texas burning brightly as the storm raged on. Initial reports suggest the facilities and chemical plants may have escaped serious damage, a let-off that is unlikely to prevent fuel prices surging once again this week. The act of protecting them meant shutting a third of US petrol refining capacity, bringing them back into service could take days.
As Rita’s damage is assessed this week, already it seems her lasting legacy ultimately still belongs to Katrina. The initial storm surge of Rita once again inundated New Orleans — the town had barely recovered from the devastation inflicted by Katrina when she came ashore on 29 August. Weakened levees easily succumbed, sending vast quantities of water into already devastated neighbourhoods days after they had been pumped dry.
Further hazards throughout the region will arrive in the form of tornadoes, spawned as Rita moves inland. Meteorologist Steve Rinard said on Saturday night he could not keep count of tornado warnings across southern Louisiana. ”They were popping up like firecrackers.”
On Sunday more than 30 000 members of the National Guard will begin picking through affected areas for survivors. Bush, who watched the storm unfold at US Northern Command in Colorado, has promised another 300 000 if required. A deployment of the British consulate will similarly head south from Dallas while the Salvation Army will begin moving 38 fully stocked mobile canteens towards badly affected areas. The relief operation is, according to those in charge, incomparable to the blundered reaction that left New Orleans stranded for days.
With a more developed infrastructure, a wealthier population and a political elite with strong ties to federal agencies in Washington, Texas was, though, never in danger of repeating Louisiana’s mistakes whatever Rita’s strength. And early this morning there were no reports of fatalities in the immediate aftermath of Rita’s impact. Yet the concern remains whether so many will ever respond to evacuation orders when the next major hurricane strikes America. The US is on course for a record breaking Atlantic hurricane season since records began in 1851. More are expected in the next month or so. – Guardian Unlimited Â