PERRY, La. – For the storm-shattered Gulf Coast, the images were all too familiar: Tiny fishing villages in splinters. Refrigerators and coffins bobbing in floodwaters. Helicopters and rescue boats making house-to-house searches of residents stranded on the rooftops.
But as the misery wrought by Hurricane Rita came into clearer view, the lasting signs that emerged a day after the storm’s 120-mph landfall were of an epic evacuation that saved countless lives, and of destruction that fell short of the Katrina-sized fears.
“As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after taking a helicopter tour Sunday.
Even with nearly 1 million in the region without electricity, some coastal towns flooded to the rooftops and the prospect of nearly 3 million evacuated residents pouring back onto the highways for home, the news was overwhelmingly positive.
Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the nation’s gasoline suffered only a glancing blow, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs. The reflooding in New Orleans from levee breaks was isolated mostly to areas already destroyed and deserted, and could be pumped out in as little as a week.
And contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north as a tropical depression instead of parking over the South for days and dumping a predicted 25 inches of torrential rains.
In contrast to Katrina, with its death toll of more than 1,000, only two deaths had been attributed to Rita by Sunday – a person killed in north-central Mississippi when a tornado spawned by the hurricane overturned a mobile home and an east Texas man struck by a fallen tree. Two dozen evacuees were killed before the storm hit in a fatal bus fire near Dallas.
Perry toured the badly hit refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur area by air Sunday.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing to a private aircraft hangar with a roof that was half collapsed and half strewn across the surrounding field. “It looks like a blender just went over the top of it.”
He said the region has been secured by law enforcement, but does not have water and sewer services available. He urged residents to stay out for now, though the statewide picture was better.
“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.
In Houston, which along with coastal Galveston was spared the brunt of Rita, officials set up a voluntary, staggered plan for an “orderly migration” with different areas going home Sunday, today and Tuesday to avoid the massive gridlock that accompanied the exodus out.
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 staggered return 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.”
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