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25 Sept 2005 report:
After making landfall at Sabine Pass, Texas near the border of Louisiana around 2:30 a.m. CDT as a Category 3 hurricane on Saturday 24th Sept 2005, Rita had weakened to a tropical storm by 1 p.m. CDT Saturday. The storm's maximum winds were just 50 mph at 4 p.m. CDT.
The remnants of Hurricane Rita weakened to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon, but as torrential rain and high winds continued to hit a wide swath of Texas and Louisiana, officials warned residents to stay away.
Officials warned that some of the hardest-hit areas, including the area around Lake Charles, Louisiana (LA), had still not been fully assessed. Residents in hard-hit western Louisiana called police early Saturday to report roofs being ripped off and downed trees. Rescuers were forced to wait until the winds outside died down to safe levels.
More than 1 million customers in the affected area were reported without power at mid-day Saturday. Officials in Texas and Louisiana warned evacuees to not return yet.
The Energy Department said it appeared the oil industry, especially the concentration of refineries in the Houston-Texas City area, had escaped major damage - news likely to be welcomed by consumers facing high oil prices.
The worst of Rita missed Houston and Galveston, and officials there were cautiously optimistic early Saturday.
Rain from Rita drenched parts of New Orleans on Saturday, straining an already fragile levee system that failed in places on Friday. But rain in the city appeared lighter than first feared, although outlying areas received more rainfall.
Rita's heaviest rains - up to 3 to 4 inches an hour - fell in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Near the coastal town of Cameron, the weather service recorded a wind gust of 112 mph as the storm's center approached.
Officials estimated at least 90% of surrounding Jefferson County residents had heeded warnings that a storm surge could submerge swaths of the low-lying county - including the seawall-and-levee-protected city of Port Arthur, near Sabine Pass.
President Bush received an hour long update Saturday from military leaders at the U.S. Northern Command and from other federal officials via videoconference. He warned people who evacuated from coastal areas to be careful about returning home.
"The situation is still dangerous because of potential flooding," the president said. "It's important for them to listen carefully to the local authorities about whether or not it is safe for them to return back to their homes. It's going to take awhile for the authorities on the ground to fully understand the impact of the flooding."
In the days before the storm's arrival, hundreds of thousands of residents of Texas and Louisiana fled their homes in a mass exodus of 2.8 million people that produced gridlock and heartbreak.
Grocery shelves were emptied, gas stations ran out of fuel and motorists had to push their cars to the side of highways after idling for hours in stuck traffic and running out of gas.
27 Sept 2005 report:
Hurricane Rita's path of devastation along the Texas-Louisiana coast became shockingly clear on Monday, 26th Sept as rescuers pulled stranded bayou residents out on skiffs and Army helicopters searched for thousands of cattle feared drowned.
Crews struggled 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 9 feet deep. Seawater pushed as far as 20 miles inland, drowning acres of rice, sugarcane fields and pasture.
An estimated 80% 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.
Houses in the marshland between Cameron and Creole were reduced to piles of bricks, or bare concrete slabs with steps leading to nowhere.
At least 16 Texas oil refineries remained shut down after Hurricane Rita, which came ashore early Saturday at Sabine Pass, about 30 miles from Beaumont. A refinery in Port Arthur and one in Beaumont were without power, and a second Port Arthur refinery was damaged and could remain out of service for two to four weeks
Early estimates were that Hurricane Rita will cost U.S. refiners about 800,000 barrels a day in capacity, on top of a drop about 900,000 barrels a day because of Katrina. Kloza said the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline could again top $3.
In Washington, President Bush said the government is prepared to again tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease any new pain at the pump, and he urged motorists to cut out any unnecessary travel.
Government officials were satisfied with the response to Rita, including better stockpiling of supplies, early evacuations and more military muscle for saving lives during Hurricane Rita than deployed four weeks ago against Hurricane Katrina and President Bush discussed giving the Pentagon a larger role in responding to disasters.
Currently, the Homeland Security Department and FEMA lead response missions in large-scale disasters. If federal armed forces are brought in to help, they do so in support of FEMA, through the U.S. Northern Command.
Bush said he would ask Congress to consider putting the Pentagon in charge of disaster rescues after military leaders indicated the need for such a national plan - a politically sensitive proposal for lawmakers trying to avoid trampling on states' rights.
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