As streets began to dry yesterday along the Texas-Louisiana coastline in the US, tens of thousands of evacuees began returning to their homes – some destroyed, some just a little wet – despite the requests of officials to “stay put.”
“Don’t come back into southeast Texas today,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who went on a helicopter tour of damaged areas yesterday.
Houston officials had devised a plan to bring the evacuees back home, dividing the city into four quadrants and asking residents to return to each section one at a time, beginning with the northwest – a request that some felt to be unreasonable.
"I am not going to wait for our neighbours to the north to get home and take a nap before I ask our good people to come home," Judge John Willy, the top elected official in Brazoria County, 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.”
Traffic conditions were heavy on Sunday for motorists heading back to Houston, where 2.5 million residents had been asked to evacuate last week prior to Rita’s landing.
Gasoline containers were strapped to the roofs of many vehicles, while police officers stationed every few miles helped stranded drivers, reported the Associated Press (AP).
Those who made it back to Houston found business reopened as well as airports, with the city’s services and schools planning to resume this week.
In the coastal areas of Texas, however, including Port Arthur and Beaumont, scenes were grimmer, with uprooted trees cluttering streets lined with demolished homes.
“Look at that,” Perry told CNN, pointing to a badly damaged private aircraft hangar during his helicopter tour. “It looks like a blender just went over the top of it.”
Damages in Texas have been estimated at more than US$8 billion, a sum that Perry predicts the government will pay in full.
Over one million customers in Texas were without power on Sunday with the Texas Air National Guard coordinating response efforts, Texas emergency operations director Jack Colley told CNN yesterday.
Colley said that basic goal at the moment for Texas relief operations is “food, water, ice and medical support to our communities.”
Floodwaters began receding on Sunday in New Orleans – a city that has been battered by two major hurricanes in the last 3 weeks.
Areas reflooded by Rita could be pumped dry within a week, far sooner than originally predicted, city officials told the New York Times yesterday.
More than just flooding, however, Rita’s winds and 15-foot storm surge also left numerous small fishing communities around southwestern Louisiana decimated.“There's really hardly anything left," Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco told the New York Times about the town of Cameron. "Everything is just obliterated."
Louisiana officials will ask Congress for more than US$31 billion to rebuild and improve levees and major roadways damaged by Katrina and Rita, Blanco told CNN yesterday.
But while Rita left much debris in the cities that felt its impact, it did not leave the massive death-toll that its predecessor, Katrina, did when it made landfall on Aug. 29.
