Texas on Sunday began the task of resettling more than 2,5-million people who had fled Hurricane Rita, attempting to avoid the traffic chaos that overwhelmed their evacuation.
Meanwhile, troops were conducting search and rescue missions in flooded Cajun towns in western Louisiana, which bore the brunt of the storm. In New Orleans, army engineers said it would take two weeks to pump out water in the Ninth Ward after Rita reopened holes in protective levees made by Hurricane Katrina.
However, by late on Sunday, only one person was known to have died as a direct result of the category three hurricane. The victim was killed in Mississippi by one of the tornadoes set spinning far from the eye of the storm by its 200kph winds. The minimal toll was a marked contrast to the thousand killed less than a month ago by Katrina, many because government rescue efforts came too late in New Orleans.
In Texas, the remedy proved worse than the storm. An eleventh-hour change in Rita’s course spared Houston and Galveston severe damage, meaning that in all probability Friday’s bus inferno in which 23 elderly patients died was the single deadliest episode of the storm.
In an effort to avert the gridlock that trapped hundreds of thousands of Texans in their cars for more than 12 hours during the evacuation, the state authorities called for a voluntary phased return. They divided the sprawling two million-strong city of Houston into quadrants, with residents coming back to the north-west and outlying areas on Sunday, the south-west on Monday and the north-east on Tuesday. The population from south-east of Houston, from coastal towns such as Port Arthur, will have to wait until flooding subsides and power lines can be lifted from the roads.
There were some reports of motorway congestion on Sunday, but no repeat of last week’s astonishing exodus. The principal problem was a petrol shortage in an area that is usually the hub of the US oil industry. Long lines of cars formed outside Houston petrol stations on Sunday. The shortage also affected salvage work. In Port Arthur, where the levees stood up to the storm surge but torrential rain left extensive flooding, a policeman said the local force was hamstrung by shortages.
”We’ve got no gas. We’re just about ready to burglarise some of the transport businesses to get some,” said the officer, who did not want his name used.
”We’re attempting to find fuel wherever we can,” a police spokesperson, Wendy Billiot, said, confirming that petrol could be commandeered. ”If it’s necessary, we are considering that option.” She was speaking at the town’s Holiday Inn, part of which had become an improvised command post. A ballroom was being used on Sunday as a temporary jail.
The humid air outside was heavy with oil from the refineries along the wide ship canal leading from the Gulf. At least one refinery, owned by Valero Energy Corporation, sustained serious damage.
For those who stayed in Port Arthur, on the Texas-Louisiana border, it was terrifying even though the town escaped the worst of the hurricane. Ashley Harrison, who was caught in the open in his pick-up truck, said: ”It was a white-knuckle moment. Next time, I don’t care if it’s a category three, two or one, I’m gone.”
Over the state border in Louisiana, helicopters flying from bases inland and the USS Iwo Jima naval ship offshore were rescuing people in an area of isolated Cajun communities where a local form of French is still spoken.
George Bush, learning the political lessons of the lacklustre federal response to Katrina, kept a high profile on Sunday. Having sat out the storm at the US northern command headquarters in Colorado, he visited an airforce bay in San Antonio, Texas. He was shown on live television nodding while being briefed, and asking questions on how to improve the federal response to natural disasters.
Coastguards warned New Orleans residents against returning to their flooded neighbourhoods. Asked if it was realistic for New Orleans residents to start heading home by Monday or Tuesday, they spoke of a ”thoughtful” approach to reflooded areas that may remain uninhabitable because of safety reasons. A spokesperson said officials should be worried until the levee structure had been repaired to pre-Katrina heights. Until then any re-entry into the city, any type of development or anything else has to take into account what would happen if it exceeded the capacity of the levees. – Guardian Unlimited Â