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Hurricane Rita

Towns: 'We got smashed'

Though the death toll from Rita remains low, some towns in the southwestern part of the state are flattened by the hurricane.

By By ANITA KUMAR, ALEX LEARY, JENNIFER LIBERTO and CHRIS TISCH
Published September 26, 2005

While Hurricane Rita may be remembered as just a tepid encore to Hurricane Katrina, a clearer picture of the misery and destruction it wrought on southwestern Louisiana emerged Sunday.

Entire towns were wiped away. Fishing villages were in splinters. An enormous chunk of the heel that makes up the state's boot-like shape was swamped with water.

"This is terrible," said Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau, head of the Louisiana National Guard, after a tour of the worst-hit areas. "Whole communities are gone."

Still, the death toll Sunday stood at two, just a small fraction of the hundreds who died in Katrina.

Much of that good fortune likely is related to Katrina, which reminded Gulf Coast residents of a hurricane's terrible potential. Three-million people in Louisiana and Texas evacuated ahead of the storm. Also, few people live in the marshy area where Rita made landfall.

Unlike many in New Orleans, the people who lived in Rita's path were far more likely to own cars so they could evacuate. While only about 73 percent of New Orleans households have a car or truck, at least 90 percent of the households in the areas directly hit by Rita have autos.

But not everyone left, and roof-top rescues reminiscent of New Orleans kept emergency officials busy Sunday.

Hundreds of people were rescued from high waters along the Louisiana coast, and emergency calls were still coming in from isolated areas near the gulf. The storm surge sent 9 feet of saltwater as far as 10 miles inland.

More than 100 boats gassed up at an Abbeville car dealership Sunday before venturing out on search-and-rescue missions.

Some residents who rode out the storm refused rescue efforts and stayed at their homes, even though there was no power or running water. Military units left them meals and water.

In Iberia Parish, an area of 74,000 residents south of Lafayette, some homes were flooded with 10 feet of water, and most roads were impassable.

Cars floated by. In an area known for its seafood industry, the stench of dead shrimp hung in the air.

"It's bad, worse than I've ever seen," said James Anderson, the parish's director of homeland security and emergency preparedness.

The parish's search and rescue staging area on Sunday was surrounded by water and could be reached only with a boat or huge truck.

Hundreds of members of the military along with local police and sheriff's deputies gathered, drinking cold water and eating shrimp po' boy sandwiches in between calls.

Many of the rescued were taken to shelters, including the Cajundome in Lafayette.

Among those there was Kevin Sloan, 46, who didn't evacuate his New Orleans home for Katrina a month ago and had to be rescued from his roof. He then hitchhiked to an uncle's house in Abbeville, in Vermilion Parish south of Lafayette, which was right in the path of Rita. Sloan once again didn't evacuate.

The floodwaters rose steadily Saturday morning, trapping Sloan until a man came by in a boat. After trips on a helicopter and bus, Sloan ended up at the Cajundome on Sunday with hundreds of other rescued people.

Another person rescued, Paul Penn, still wore the life vest and knee-high rubber boots he had on when a boat saved him from his mobile home in Abbeville. His wife, Marilyn, read her pocket Bible as the water rose, submerging their only means of escape, a Chevy S-10 pickup.

"I asked God to please send someone to rescue us and thank God someone did," she said in an easy Cajun accent.

Robert and Andrea Richard, both 27, arrived Saturday with their 9-year-old daughter, Brooklyn. They awoke Sunday to see their town, Erath, on television.

"They showed city hall and all you could see was the top of the dome," Andrea Richard said. "They said they couldn't tell what was the Gulf of Mexico and what was Erath."

Without question, they said, their home is gone - the 60-inch TV in the living room, the furniture set they just paid off, the computer, the refrigerator.

In Cameron Parish, just across the state line from Texas and in the path of Rita's harshest winds, concrete slabs were the only evidence that homes once stood there.

Holly Beach, a popular vacation and fishing spot, was gone. Only the stilts that held houses above the ground remained.

All along the roadways, from the wooded stretches of southeast Texas to central Louisiana, entire pine forests appeared to have been snapped in half by the force of the winds. The highways were tangled with fallen trees - pointing northward - and downed power lines.

Don Jones, 48, was among the first of the 370 residents to return home Sunday to Sabine Pass and found he had lost his home and nearly everything he had accumulated in a lifetime.

"All I got right now is my fishing pole and this cooler full of shrimp," he said, towing the plastic foam container through the knee-deep waters that covered the streets.

"We did not dodge the bullet," he said. "We got smashed."

A line of shrimp boats steamed through an oil sheen to reach nearby Hackberry, only to find homes and camps had been flattened. In one area, there was a flooded high school football field, its bleachers and goal posts jutting from what had become part of the Gulf of Mexico.

Some bayou residents who arrived with boats in hopes of getting back in to survey the damage to their property were turned away by state officials. But all it took was a scan of the Intracoastal Waterway to see a hint of the damage: refrigerators and even a few coffins from the area's above-ground cemeteries bobbing in the water.

There was extensive damage to rice and sugarcane fields and to the hunting and shrimping industries.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, whose Cajun roots run deep in this area of her state, asked the federal government for $34-billion to help with storm recovery.

After a briefing with Blanco in Baton Rouge, President Bush said: "I know the people of this state have been through a lot. We ask for God's blessings on them and their families."

Just across the state line, Texas Gov. Rick Perry toured the badly hit refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur by air Sunday.

He said the region has been secured by law enforcement, but does not have water and sewer service. He urged residents to stay out for now.

"Even though the people right here in Beaumont and Port Arthur and this part of Orange County really got whacked, the rest of the state missed a bullet," Perry said.

To the west in Houston, officials set up a staggered plan for residents to return home Sunday, today or Tuesday to avoid the massive gridlock of the evacuation.

But while the return appeared to be going well Sunday with traffic moving briskly, not all Texans were happy with a slow return home. John Willy, the top elected official in Brazoria County, southwest of Houston, said he would ignore the state's plan.

"I am not going to wait for our neighbors to the north to get home and take a nap, before I ask our good people to come home," he said in a statement. "Our people are tired of the state's plan! They have a plan, too, and it's real simple. They plan to come home when they want."

In New Orleans, floodwaters began to recede and city leaders again focused on reopening parts of the ghost town-like city.

However, the lower 9th Ward, which was deluged with 20 feet of water in Katrina, still remained largely underwater. Helicopters dropped giant sand bags to shore up the broken levee on the Industrial Canal, which Rita punched through Friday.

With most of the city spared significant new damage from Rita, Mayor Ray Nagin immediately renewed his plan to allow some residents to return to drier parts of the city. Those areas - including the once-raucous French Quarter - could eventually support a population of at least half of its pre-Katrina population of about 500,000 residents.

--Information from the Associated Press and the McClatchy News Service was used in this report.

[Last modified September 26, 2005, 01:33:41]