Hurricane Rita pummeled east Texas and the Louisiana coast, battering communities with floods and intense winds. But residents were relieved the once-dreaded storm proved far less fierce and deadly than Katrina.
After the storm passed Saturday, authorities pleaded with the roughly 3 million evacuees not to hurry home too soon, fearing more chaos.
"Be patient, stay put," said Texas Governor Rick Perry. "If you are in a safe place with food, water, bedding, you are better remaining there for the time being."
PHOTO: AP
In any other hurricane season, Rita might have seemed devastating. It knocked out power for more than 1 million customers, sparked fires across the hurricane zone and swamped Louisiana shoreline towns with a 4.5m storm surge that required daring boat and helicopter rescues of hundreds of people.
But the new storm came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with its 1,000-plus death toll, cataclysmic flooding of New Orleans and staggering destruction in Mississippi. By contrast, Rita spared Houston, New Orleans and other major cities a direct hit. By Saturday evening, the only reported death was in Mississippi, where one person was killed when a tornado that spun off the remains of the hurricane overturned a mobile home.
"The damage is not as serious as we had expected it to be," said R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "The evacuations worked."
Damage to the vital concentration of oil refineries along the coast appeared relatively light, although industry officials said it was too early to assess whether there would be an impact on oil prices. Valero Energy Corp. said its 255,000-barrel-per-day Port Arthur refinery sustained significant damage to two cooling towers and a flare stack and would need at least two weeks for repairs.
Late Saturday, two environmental cleanup workers spread booms and oil-absorbent pads along a perimeter fence at the refinery. Knee-deep floodwaters were stained with dark brown crude oil, and the odor of petroleum hung thick in the air.
Rita roared ashore Saturday morning close to the Texas-Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane with top winds of 193kph and warnings of up to 63.5cm of rain. By mid-afternoon, it was downgraded to a tropical storm with top sustained winds of 80kph as it moved slowly through east Texas toward Shreveport, Louisiana.
Before it weakened, Rita showed its strength across a broad region between Houston and New Orleans.
In Beaumont, trees of all sizes and power lines were down, street signs were shredded, and one brick wall of an office building had collapsed. Said Dr. Gaylon Gonzalez, a surgeon who spent the night at Christus Hospital St. Elizabeth as Rita arrived: "It sounded like a power washer hitting the windows."
Perry surveyed Beaumont by air Saturday.
"Considering it was a Category 5 storm 48 hours ago, I think we're probably pretty fortunate," he said.
The Texas Department of Transportation dispatched a 30-vehicle convoy from Beaumont to clear a debris-covered highway to the north toward Lufkin. Authorities used military helicopters and a bus to move some nursing home residents who had been stranded since Friday at an elementary school without power in the small town of Fred.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS