Hurricane Rita carved a new path of destruction along the Gulf Coast on Saturday, crushing buildings and flooding vast regions but thankfully falling short of the calamity inflicted by Hurricane Katrina.
At least, so far. Emergency managers worried about monumental problems well inland as the rain-engorged storm lingered over Texas, Arkansas and the Mississippi River Valley.
“It could cause a catastrophic flooding event,” said Jack Colley, Texas’ emergency management coordinator. He expressed concern about an 80-county area covering 64,000 square miles and home to 11.3 million residents.
Late Saturday, water managers in eastern Texas said they had to release water from an overburdened dam at Lake Livingston.
They ordered people in several counties to “immediately move to higher ground” and warned that hundreds of homes along the banks of the Trinity River will be flooded later this week.
As it raged ashore earlier Saturday, Rita simultaneously ignited fires and delivered drenching rain. It left more than 1 million people without power. It catapulted seawater ashore.
In Louisiana, a place again bearing the brunt of the storm, it compelled daring rescues by boat and helicopter of hundreds of people trapped in flooded homes.
It tormented many people in many places, and damage estimates ranged into the billions of dollars.
One person was killed in Mississippi by a Rita-spawned tornado; The Associated Press reported Saturday night. Still, many residents and authorities expressed a measure of relief.
“It could have been worst in terms of flooding and people dying,” Charles Kelly said as he inspected damage to his downtown dance club in hard-hit Beaumont, Texas. “But we’ve got a lot of clean-up to do before we can say it is over.”
“The damage is not as serious as we expected it to be,” said R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Many oil refineries near or south of Houston, including the largest on the Texas coast, reported no significant damage and announced plans to swiftly return to production, good news for consumers.
Several others closer to the storm’s path, however, could be out of service for up to a month.
The main population centers of Houston and Galveston fared quite well, but that created a new problem: Many evacuees rushed back, ignoring the pleas of authorities and complicating access by power crews, medical teams and others crucial workers.
Portions of I-10, I-45 and some state roads were clogged again by mid-afternoon, just as they were earlier in the week, though this time in the opposite direction.
“Do not come back until word is given by local authorities,” Houston Mayor Bill White said. “This is not the time to return unless you have an essential job. You are endangering others if you do that.”
Though there were no immediate reports of storm-related deaths in Texas or Louisiana, authorities worried about coastal residents and others who defied evacuation orders and decided not to join the 3 million people who retreated inland.
So many trapped residents of Vermilion Parish, in southwest Louisiana, placed urgent calls for help that the sheriff’s office asked everyone with boats to join the rescue effort.
By early afternoon, 150 boats were amassed in the parking lot of a used-car dealership and patrols were under way.
“We are confident we are going to be able to get to the majority, if not all of them,” said Maj. Darryl LeBlanc of the Vermilion sheriff’s department.
More water, up to 8 feet of it, poured into some New Orleans neighborhoods that were previously swamped by Katrina and still largely abandoned.
c 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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