Rita's destruction shocks rescuers

Coffins which spilled from a damaged mausoleum during Hurricane Rita lie in floodwaters on Monday, near Our Lady of the Sea Catholic Church in Cameron, Louisiana. PHOTO: AP

Hurricane Rita's path of devastation along the Texas-Louisiana coast became shockingly clear, as rescuers pulled stranded bayou residents out on skiffs and army helicopters searched for thousands of cattle feared drowned.

Crews struggled on Monday to clean up the tangle of smashed homes and downed trees. The hurricane slammed low-lying fishing villages, shrimping ports and ranches with water up to 2.7m deep. Seawater pushed as far as 32km inland, drowning hectares of rice, sugarcane fields and pasture.

In coastal Terrebonne Parish, the count of severely damaged or destroyed homes stood at nearly 9,900. An estimated 80 percent of the buildings in the town of Cameron, population 1,900, were leveled. Farther inland, half of Creole, population 1,500, was left in splinters.

"I would use the word destroyed," US Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore said of Cameron. "Cameron and Creole have been destroyed except for the courthouse, which was built on stilts on higher ground. Most of the houses and public buildings no longer exist or are even in the same location that they were."

The death toll from the second devastating hurricane in a month rose to 10 with the discovery in a Beaumont, Texas, apartment of five people -- a man, a woman and three children -- who apparently were killed by carbon monoxide from a generator they were running indoors after Rita knocked out the electricity. In Texas, a couple was confirmed killed by an uprooted tree that fell on their home and another man was electrocuted as he tried to connect a generator.

Houses in the marshland between Cameron and Creole were reduced to piles of bricks, or bare concrete slabs with steps leading to nowhere. Walls of an elementary-school gymnasium had been washed or blown away, leaving basketball hoops hanging from the ceiling. A single-story white home was propped up against a line of trees, left there by floodwaters that ripped it from its foundation. A bank was open to the air, its vault still intact.

"We used to call this sportsman's paradise," said Honore, a Louisiana native. "But sometimes Mother Nature will come back and remind us that it has power over the land. That's what this storm did."

While residents of the Texas refinery towns of Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange were blocked from returning to their homes because of the danger of debris-choked streets and downed power lines, authorities in Louisiana were unable to keep bayou residents from venturing in on their own by boat to see if Rita wrecked their homes.

"Knowing these people, most of them are hunters, trappers, farmers. They're not going to wait on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or anyone else," said Robert LeBlanc, director of emergency preparedness in Vermilion Parish. "They're going to do what they need to do. They're used to primitive conditions."

And many were finding that conditions were, in fact, primitive. Across southwestern Louisiana, many people found they had no home to go back to.

Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said its teams used small boats to rescue about 200 people trapped in their homes.

In Chauvin, a steady stream of people were brought by small boats from flooded sections of Terrebonne Parish. Some cried as they hauled plastic bags filled with their possessions.

"This is the worst thing I've ever been through," said Danny Hunter, 56. "I called FEMA this morning and they said they couldn't help us because this hasn't been declared a disaster area."

"Texas is a disaster area!" Jenny Reading shouted. "I guess the president made sure of that and everyone just forgot about us."

A FEMA spokesman said that Terrebonne Parish was declared a disaster area for Katrina but not for Rita. Officials were checking to see if the residents were eligible for Rita help.