New Zealanders caught up in hurricane jam

New Zealander Tim Duerr does not know what is left of his home in Port Arthur, Texas, nearly two days after it was battered by Hurricane Rita.

Like other Port Arthur residents Mr Duerr, from Wellington, was still barred today from returning to the Gulf Coast town near the Louisiana border which bore the brunt of the storm on Saturday (local time).

"They just won't let us in. If anyone tries to get there, the police will escort them out," he told NZPA from the hospital near Houston where he works as a respiratory therapist.

Mr Duerr sounded frustrated at the lack of information being made available to Port Arthur residents, most of whom evacuated before Rita struck.

"I haven't heard anything. They don't tell us much about Port Arthur here -- not on the news or anywhere," he said.

Rita tore through Port Arthur as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 190km/h and a sea surge which left much of the low-lying town under a metre of water. News reports suggested few structures were left undamaged.

Mr Duerr was hopeful today that his house escaped the flooding.

"We don't usually get flooding in our area. We're a little higher up," he said.

"There's a bunch of trees around our house, so we could have a tree on our house right now. A lot of the roofs were taken off so we might have no roof when we get back, I don't know."

Mr Duerr has not been home since Wednesday. The mass evacuation from Houston created traffic jams which stopped him making the 130km journey home from San Jacinto Methodist Hospital in Baytown. He was unable to help his family evacuate before the storm. But his wife, two young children, mother-in-law and family pets made it to safety with family in Huntsville north of Houston.

"It took them 10 hours to get there in what is normally a three-hour drive," Mr Duerr said.

He is unlikely to see his family for at least another two or three days, as he is among the skeleton staff left at the hospital working 12-hour shifts each day.

"We're so short-staffed after the evacuations that I have to stay here around the clock," he said.

Because the Houston area was spared by Rita, the hospital had no storm-related casualties.

Mr Duerr's brother Julian, who had been visiting last week while on a world tour, experienced the chaos as the Gulf Coast area of Texas was evacuated.

He had booked a ticket from Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston to Dallas on Thursday and intended to travel from Port Arthur to Houston by bus. But he was told his bus ticket did not guarantee him a seat or reaching Houston.

He managed to get on an early morning flight from Port Arthur, after a taxi driver took him to 10 different automatic teller machines until he found one with any cash to pay for his taxi fare.

"All the money machines were emptied by people withdrawing cash before the hurricane," Julian Duerr, a Wellington lab technician, told NZPA from Dallas.

At the Intercontinental Airport he queued with thousands of evacuees, being processed by the few check-in and security staff who had managed to drive through traffic jams to get to work or had not themselves sought refuge farther inland.

"When I got there I was told my 7pm flight had been cancelled and was put on a 3pm stand-by to Dallas," he said.

"Luckily I got a (10.30am) flight out because I talked to a pilot, who told me to look at the (departures) board and take the next flight out because they were going to close the airport in three hours. There weren't enough flights out for everyone, but the plane I was on was half-full because people were taking too long to get through security and missed it."

- NZPA