NOW IT IS RITA.......

[susieq]

A million flee wrath of Rita
By Tim Reid and Jacqui Goddard

Texans are taking no chances as a force more powerful than Katrina sweeps across the Gulf of Mexico to Houston
 
MORE than a million people were preparing to leave Houston and southern Texas last night as Hurricane Rita, a 300-mile wide Category 5 storm, headed for the oil-rich Gulf Coast.
As the death toll from Hurricane Katrina passed 1,000, oil prices hit $68 a barrel and Rita, potentially more powerful, bore down on the Texas coast. It is expected to hit land on Saturday. Officials in New Orleans issued a warning that even 3in of rain could overwhelm the damaged protective levees. Army engineers worked round the clock to make repairs.
 
Rita, with wind speeds of 165mph, is expected to make landfall southeast of Houston, near the coastal city of Galveston, the scene of a hurricane that killed up to 12,000 people in 1900. Standing in its presumed path are three of the country’s five largest refineries.
Agbeli Ameko, an energy analyst, said: “What wasn’t hit by Katrina is being targeted by Rita. The market is taking the storm very seriously.”
Nasa ordered the evacuation of the Johnson Space Centre in Houston and turned over control of the International Space Station to its Russian partners as most of its staff fled from Rita.

President Bush, declaring a state of emergency in Louisiana and Texas, said: “We’ve got to be ready for the worst.”

Bill White, the Mayor of Houston, called for residents in low-lying, flood-prone areas of the city to leave, and asked them to help neighbours who could not move themselves.

Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, ordered 5,000 National Guardsmen and 1,000 state troopers into position.

The White House, federal officials and state and local politicians, chastened by the political and psychological impact of Katrina, promised that lessons had been learnt in New Orleans. Last night the poor and infirm were already being evacuated from Rita’s likely landfall, and a huge military and federal aid programme had begun.

Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Secretary who was heavily criticised for the initially feeble response to Katrina, said of Rita: “I think we are going to be ready when it does hit land.”

Hundreds of truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals were waiting last night at locations in Rita’s path and rescue and medical teams were in position.

Hospital patients in southern Texas were evacuated. The Mayor of Galveston, Lyda Ann Thomas, declared a state of emergency and ordered a mandatory evacuation of nursing homes and assisted-living centres across the region.

“The real lesson (from Katrina) that I think the citizens learnt is that the people in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi did not leave in time,” Mayor Thomas said. “We’ve always asked people to leave earlier, but because of Katrina, they are now listening to us.”

by last night, 2,000 poor and infirm residents in Galveston had left the city by bus. Officials urged them to carry prescriptions to last at least three months. David Paulison, the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that the Pentagon had set up a military field hospital in Texas and a field kitchen able to serve 5,000 meals a day. “We are making an extraordinary effort to talk to local officials on an hourly basis,” he said. “We are not taking any chances with this storm. We are making sure that whatever resources we have will be on the ground.”
 
Courtesy of http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1791687,00.html

[12noon]

Hope it's all over soon. You would never think the weather could be so bad.

[Queen Bee]

... I don't even know what to say sometimes. I have several friends in Texas that already evacuated several days ago... At least I don't have to worry about their safety now. I worry about the ones who choose to wait these things out.

[susieq]

I haven't been able to have much spare pc time lately   so on returning to catch up with the news (TV radio pc or people chatting) I seem hear the same thing about these Hurricanes Rita and Katrina...the general concensus seems to be "you can't go against nature" "nature will have its way" and then you hear odd comments like,  "these things are meant to happen to weed out the planet because we haven'y had any major world wars to clear it all out"!!!!!  I honestly don't think that some of these commentators would maybe be thinking that way, if it were someone close to themselves..however, the farther away the person, it seems the more stupid (crass - insensitive - unthinking) were the statements....or so it seemed.....I'm off fo find an up-date

[susieq]

 :(Here is a story which combines the tragedies of each of the hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Far From Home, the Survivors of Two Hurricanes Become Neighbors, Mentors and Friends

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: September 30, 2005

PINEVILLE, La., Sept. 29 - When Alphonso D. Thomas spotted Amelia Lavergne sitting in the shelter here on Tuesday afternoon, he said, he immediately recognized the look. The slumped shoulders from exhaustion. The red eyes from crying for missing relatives. The frustration of having her worldly belongings tucked under her small cot.
It was the same gloom he felt when he first arrived here from New Orleans almost a month ago, three days after Hurricane Katrina came through the city. Mr. Thomas, 33, said he walked over, put his hand on Ms. Lavergne's shoulder and told her the most reassuring thing he could.
"It's O.K., honey," he recalled saying. "I know how you feel."
Mr. Thomas is by now a veteran evacuee. Ms. Lavergne, 54, is a newcomer, having been chased here last week by another hurricane, Rita, which ravaged her home in Lake Charles, La.
A sad and unusual nexus has formed here in the center of the state, where Hurricane Katrina's power drove thousands from New Orleans, 220 miles to the southeast, and Hurricane Rita brought them from Lake Charles, 100 miles southwest.
At a vacant Wal-Mart store, transformed into a sprawling shelter, the groups may look the same: they all wear fluorescent bracelets, wait in line for new toothpaste and soap, and shower in a rented truck outside the building. They have uncertainty and exhaustion in common, but talking to people from both groups is similar to hearing from two distantly related tribes that have been put together by chance to mentor, console and befriend each other.
They all have long lists of frustrations that compete with what nearly all of them call their blessing.
"Thank the Lord we are alive," Ms. Lavergne said. A man from New Orleans responded with an amen.
Over the last several days, the New Orleans evacuees have become teachers to those who left their homes in Lake Charles. Some of the advice is practical: how to file claims with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which of the Red Cross volunteers are most helpful, directions to the best diners in town.
But mostly, when the two groups talk, the conversation centers on the inextricable bond they share. The veterans tell the newcomers to call themselves survivors, not victims. They should think of themselves not as refugees, or even as evacuees, but as guests in this shelter, where decent food and fresh clothing are the least they deserve. They should remember that they did not ask to be here.
The Hurricane Katrina survivors tell the new arrivals that they should make themselves at home in their temporary living quarters, with coffee makers or small televisions or by just arranging their beds into clusters for makeshift rooms. "You don't know how long you'll be here, so might as well get comfortable," Mr. Thomas said.
It gave Ms. Lavergne a little comfort to hear that Mr. Thomas had been able to track down all 25 of the relatives he initially thought were missing after Hurricane Katrina. A few hours after talking with him, she found out where the rest of her family was.
"My mama is in Mississippi, my daughter left and went with her mother-in-law in Houston, my baby girl is in Dallas, my other baby is in Texarkana," she said, sitting on a cot covered with her favorite green blanket from home. "All I need now is to see my people. I'm fine. We all want to go home. It seems like I have been here forever. Theyre treating us good over here, but I just want to go home."
Those from the southwest part of the state crowd around the wide-screen televisions to look for pictures of their homes that might pop up on the latest newscast about Hurricane Rita. Those who have been here longer warn that such attentiveness is futile.
"I just can't watch it all the time, it is so depressing," said Amy Carr, 61, an evacuee from New Orleans East whose bed faces the largest of the half-dozen televisions in the shelter.
Searching for pictures of their homes on the Internet, pointing out which house was smashed by a tree and which apartment building's roof was ripped off, the Hurricane Rita evacuees still make plans to return as soon as possible.
But the Hurricane Katrina victims have largely abandoned their optimism. Few of them say they have plans to return.

Courtesy of:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/national/nationalspecial/30shelter.html?fta=y

 

[marjorie]

I hope everything gets back to normal asap.