US sighs deeply as Rita rolls past

ABBEVILLE, Louisiana - Rescuers waded through water or used boats and helicopters to search for people stranded in Louisiana's flooded Cajun country, but US officials breathed a sigh of relief that Hurricane Rita's passage had caused little loss of life.

The second powerful storm to strike the US Gulf Coast in less than a month skimmed Houston, heart of the US oil industry, when it slammed into the swampy Texas-Louisiana border on Saturday, and appeared to have largely spared the region's crucial refineries.

Wind, pounding rain and surging floodwater badly damaged small cities and remote swampland towns to Houston's east.

But mass evacuations before the storm had emptied most of them, and police, National Guard troops and other rescue workers arrived quickly, so there was no repeat of the looting and chaos that besieged New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

"I have a raggedy house and it didn't blow down," said Dallas Clavelle, who rode out Hurricane Rita in his home in the east Texan city of Port Arthur.

"The house shook a little and I went back to sleep."

There was only one death directly related to Rita -- a person killed by a tornado in Belzoni, Mississippi. Twenty-three people also died in a bus that caught fire during the evacuation from Houston.

In New Orleans, the US Army Corps of Engineers worked to plug levees fractured by Katrina. But parts of the mostly empty city were again covered by up to 12 feet of water.

Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the Katrina federal recovery efforts, said it could take until June to rebuild the levees.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the oil and natural gas industries had suffered a "glancing blow at worst" -- good news for US consumers reeling under high petrol prices. But he said the Lone Star State probably suffered $8 billion in damages.

Perry said he expected the federal government to "pay fully the cost of this."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she would ask the US government and Congress for $11.5 billion to repair the state's damaged transportation system, and $20.2 billion to rebuild the levees protecting ruined New Orleans from floods.

The levees, not built to withstand the most powerful hurricanes, gave way after Katrina and filled 80 per cent of the famed city of jazz and Mardi Gras with rancid floodwaters.

"The challenge is so enormous that we cannot accomplish this rebirth without this president and without this Congress," Blanco told reporters after meeting with President George W. Bush in Baton Rouge.

'STAY PUT'

Across the Gulf Coast, authorities urged millions of evacuees to stay put until water, sewage and electricity systems were back up and running.

In Lake Charles, which was partly submerged, buses gathered at the civic centre to ferry people away.

New Orleans resident Kevin McCoy said he and his mother, her two cockatoos carried in a cage, had fled to Lake Charles after their hometown was devastated. Now they were evacuees again.

"My mum's really distraught," said McCoy. "She came here to be safe and then this happened. It's an exercise in patience. We're heading out to Atlanta. That's where ... there's the least amount of natural disasters."

To the southeast, in the coastal swamplands of the Louisiana bayous, home to the French-speaking Cajun community and culture, rescuers renewed efforts to find a number of people stranded in Abbeville, Pecan Island and Vermilion Bay, the US Coast Guard said.

Several residents went back, worried not only about property loss and the fate of family and friends but about their livestock, and they then became trapped in storm surges.

Some people clung to rooftops and oil tanks in water up to nine feet deep after storm, fighting off snakes that also wanted to reach dry land.

"We need to pray to the good Lord to switch the wind's direction," Vermilion Parish Sheriff Mike Couvillan said.

STORM SURGE

Rita's storm surge was measured at 15 feet. Couvillan said it reached his own ranch 35 miles inland and he feared all 80 of his cattle had been killed.

Most of the 1.4 million people along the southern Louisiana coast fled and were unlikely to be able to return for weeks. Shaken survivors found destroyed buildings, debris-strewn streets, downed power lines and toppled trees.

Rita cut power to more than 2 million people in Texas and Louisiana, after dumping up to a foot of rain and lashing the region with 190 km/h winds. Utility companies said it could take a month to fully restore electricity.

Rita and Katrina knocked out nearly all energy production in the offshore fields of the Gulf of Mexico and 30 per cent of US refining capacity onshore. The storm damaged at least three oil refineries, oil companies said.

Bush, who had monitored Rita's arrival over three days, visited Baton Rouge on Sunday and said Congress ought to consider giving the US military the lead role in responding to natural disasters.

- REUTERS