Some Photos of after Rita

The first feeder bands of Rita.






Some downed fences after Rita.

Rita Notes

September 23
=================================

We spent the morning of the 23rd making last minute preperations. My brother-in-law and I got a sheet of plywood, and put it up at my mom's on one last window - she had turned lack before we had to ride it out.

We were ready to return to my house where we were going to ride it out, when Susie's Mom called. Her parents had evacuated to to their son's place in Lake Charles. The shift was good for us; bad for them. So they had returned to their home here in Baytown. We got a generator over to their place, and got back to our house.

7 P.M. - Shifted more up the coast. Some wind and rain, though not heavy yet, though beginning to build.

8 P.M. - Wind and rain getting a bit harder. Hurricane force winds a bit to our east of us. Galveston getting 60 mph winds or so. Beaumont also.

9.30 P.M.

Still have power. Still have data, but cable tv is out - using radio for informaion, and one old t.v. with rabbit ears that can get the Fox UHF station. Transformers starting to pop in our area. They are lighting up the sky like fireworks. Getting power drops and operations. Unplugged the computers, but left the router for my pda; so I'm posting this from my pda. Rain picking up. Wind gusts picking up.

September 24
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1.00 a.m. - we're on CNN! Damn, lost power again...just at our moment in the national spotlight. Well, not exactly. We made the news in '83, during - much worse - hurricane Alicia.

Power going off and on. We lapsed to sleep with power going on and off, then for good around 3.30
A.M. High winds and rains continued through the morning. As it got lighter, we could see some minor carport damage; oak tree branches down. Sister in law called and said that a water plant in Baytown was on fire - that might explain the low water pressure. Sister in law had gone to San Marcos. She has 13 of the family with her - we have 7 at our place. Fired up the battery powered radio. Still no stores or gas, of course.

8 P.M. - Still no power. Getting pretty warm and muggy. Did a brief tour of our area-lots of downed trees and fences; some power lines. A lot of blown transformers that will take time to fix.

September 25
===================================
Power coming back on, a bit at time. Not our house yet. Staying at a sister in law's. Food and gas in short supply, but we did find a Shipley's Do-nuts open. We sprung for do-nuts and kolaches for everyone; waited in line for an hour for them.

September 26
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We have power! Things are not back to normal, by any means, but much better. Emptied the refrigerator.

Good news from Susie's folk in the Lake Charles area. All got out okay. Her brother, who is a doctor, did stay, riding it out at St. Patrick's Hospital. He reported that Lake Charles was very badly damaged, but, somehow, his house, and those of his cousins', all managed to survive.

Area districts cancel school

http://mobile.baytownsun.com/mobilestory.lasso?wcd=23060
By Michael Pineda

Baytown Sun

Published September 27, 2005
BAYTOWN — The Goose Creek Independent School District announced Monday that school will reopen on Thursday, September 29. The district had previously announced that it would be closed on Monday and Tuesday but decided to add another day so that families would be given time to travel back home and staff members would have more time to prepare for the reopening of school.

“Because many of our employees and students live in or evacuated to areas that were affected by the hurricane, we hope that this additional day will give them adequate time to travel home safely," Goose Creek Superintendent Barbara Sultis in a press release." In addition, many of our bus drivers generously participated in transporting residents out of town during the evacuation effort, and we want to allow them sufficient time to drive back to town and prepare to transport our students on Thursday."

Baytonians return, get back to their lives

http://mobile.baytownsun.com/mobilestory.lasso?wcd=23059

Published September 27, 2005
Baytown was still living on borrowed water as of Monday evening, but city officials report there are still enough reserves to last two more days — if residents keep conserving.

There is still no power to critical substations that pump water from the Trinity River into Baytown, and city officials are unsure when power will be restored.

Assistant City Manager Kelvin Knauf said Baytown has been relying on its two-day reserves since Saturday, but that the supply was lasting longer than expected.

Best-Laid Plans Weren't Enough in Texas

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RITA_TEXAS_EXODUS_HK1?SITE=ORBAK&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Best-Laid Plans Weren't Enough in Texas

HOUSTON (AP) -- It was envisioned as the anti-Katrina plan: Texas officials sketched a staggered, orderly evacuation plan for Hurricane Rita and urged people to get out days ahead of time.

But tangles still arrived even before the storm's first bands. Panicked drivers ran out of gas, a spectacular, deadly bus fire clogged traffic, and freeways were red rivers of taillights that stretched to the horizon.

Jeeze, tell me about it .....

Evac 2

Here's a snap from my phone. No a real good shot of the traffic nightmare that began for the Houston Area due to the Rita Evacuation.

What a cluster.......Fourteen hours on the road, leaving at 12:30 AM, and then with daytime temps around 100, and the radiation off of the road near 120; and as far as we got was Liberty - a small town and county seat about sixteen miles away. We were running out of gas - as was everybody else, after sitting on the two lane black top that serves as an evacuation route - when we found a station that had some gas - the last one as far as I know, and only taking cash, of course - so we got some, and had a pow wow on the next course of action - go home, or head for the town of Livingston. There, you get on US 59, and head to Lufkin. 59, at that time, and still now, is a sold mass of overheated cars

The real kicker is that Rita appears to have changed it's target area, putting the evacuation route on track for a direct hit. With no guarantee, or good chance, even, of getting more gas. So, the choices came to ride it out at home, or get caught on the road. We came home. We are still going to get smacked good, and I may loose power for a few days, so I might not post for a while.

You know, Texas seemed to be doing such a better job that New Orleans and Louisiana did with Katrina, but the transportation system, something Texas has historicity ignored, has now bite us in the ass. The only place I saw any kind of law enforcment was in Dayton, where the traffice flowed well and with realativly good speed. I saw some for a bit in Liberty, but they gave up after a while, and left us to our own.

Parts of Houston join evacuation

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/avantgo.hts/topstory2/3363238
Sept. 21, 2005, 5:50PM

Parts of Houston join evacuation
From staff and wire reports

Traffic crawled along Houston's freeways today as officials ordered the mandatory evacuation of vulnerable areas in advance of Hurricane Rita, which was chugging toward the Gulf Coast as a dangerous Category 5 storm.

Mayor Bill White and County Judge Robert Eckels said today that some mandatory evacuations would begin at 6 p.m. They encouraged residents to leave voluntarily if possible before the evacuations become mandatory, and it was clear that thousands of residents were heeding the advice.

I saw the local hyway earlier today-grid lock.

Getting ready to go

Cell net is down with traffic; land lines not much better. Email still working, though.

Hyways out of town are jammed; will be a long slow ride north at best.

Baytown issues mandatory evacuation

Baytown issues mandatory evacuation

From staff reports
Baytown Sun Email story
Print story
Published September 21, 2005

Baytown, Texas—Hurricane Rita this morning was upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane and continues moving across the Gulf of Mexico towards the Texas coast. A State of Emergency exists for all counties in Texas and emergency procedures are being taken. Mayor Calvin Mundinger has ordered a mandatory evacuation effective at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow, September 22nd for all residents, except essential personnel of federal, state, local and educational institutions along with essential personnel of hospitals and industrial facilities.

“Hurricane Rita is an immensely powerful storm that threatens lives and property in Baytown. We have received word from recognized experts on the track of the storm and fully understand that landfall in the Houston-Galveston area remains a possibility. I feel at this time it is necessary to issue a mandatory evacuation order beginning at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow,” said Mayor Mundinger. “We have already issued a mandatory evacuation order for persons with special needs and this evacuation order will extend to all persons in Baytown, except essential personnel.”

....

Yep, and the cell network is now failing. Started earlier, and was spotty this afternoon, but not it's pretty much out of commission. Also, the land lines are getting hard to get through on. Looks like it's just email and IM for the moment.

Lovely Rita - not

What a bitch...packed the photos and documents; getting ready to flee. Going to the Mineloa, Texas area. What a pain in the ass - of course, if that's the worst of it, I'll consider ourselves lucky. Last check showed it sliding a little further south; we might just get ten feet of water then, and 80 mph winds.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

-- Groucho Marx

National Hurricane Center's official forecast naming Galveston as Rita's most likely Gulf Coast target

Great, just what we freakin' need.....

Sept. 19, 2005, 1:32PM

Galveston considers evacuation

By RHEA DAVIS and KEVIN MORAN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

GALVESTON - With the National Hurricane Center's official forecast naming Galveston as Rita's most likely Gulf Coast target later this week, island officials will announce this afternoon a voluntary evacuation and the possibility of a mandatory evacuation.
The Galveston Police Department said the city's mayor is holding a 1:30 p.m. news conference -- to be Webcast here -- to call for a voluntary evacuation in preparation of Rita, which is a tropical storm now but is expected to strengthen into a hurricane when it moves into the Gulf later today.
.....

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/avantgo.hts/topstory/3360091

Canadians beat U.S. Army to New Orleans suburb

Canadians beat U.S. Army to New Orleans suburb
08 Sep 2005 05:08:07 GMT
Source: Reuters

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 7 (Reuters) - A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the U.S. military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday.

The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 8 feet (2.4 metres) deep in places, Sen. Walter Boasso said.
"Fabulous, fabulous guys," Boasso said. "They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people."

"We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere."

Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street

www.nytimes.com
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street
By DAN BARRY

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.

Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.

Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.

Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.

That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.

Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.

240,000 Evacuees Strain Capacity

n Texas
240,000 Evacuees Strain Capacity
By Lisa Rein and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page A01

HOUSTON, Sept. 3 -- Thousands of evacuees, exhausted and frustrated after days trapped in flooded New Orleans, continued to pour into Houston and other cities in Texas on Saturday, rapidly filling enormous arenas and small shelters in an extraordinary exodus of humanity that has quickly strained the capacity of the Lone Star State.

Over the past six days, Texas has mobilized its emergency relief operations almost as if Hurricane Katrina slammed into its borders, rather than the neighboring eastern states, and in a very real sense Katrina has hit Texas with massive force. About 240,000 Louisianans have found sanctuary in the Lone Star State in hotels and large shelters, state officials said. Many more are in church-run shelters and even some in private homes. Officials are scrambling to stay ahead of what they anticipate could be a long-term relocation of humanity.