Howlin' Hurricane Rita

By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted September 23, 2005.

At 11am Friday, Rita was downgraded to a Category Three storm by the National Hurricane Center. Just offshore Texas and Louisiana in the Gulf Coast, Rita is predicted to make landfall early Saturday morning. Federal, state and local agencies have been taking the threat of the storm much more seriously than they did Katrina, so millions are currently being evacuated from Southeast Texas and Louisiana.

Below is a roundup of the latest news from national and local sources, as well as first-person commentary from bloggers and AlterNet readers.

From EmergencyEmail.org:

At 1pm CDT ... The center of Hurricane Rita was located about 190 miles southeast of Galveston, Tex., and about 175 miles southeast of Port Arthur, Tex.

Rita is moving toward the northwest near 10 mph and is expected to continue during the next 24 hours. The core of Rita will make landfall near the southwest Louisiana and Upper Texas coasts early Saturday.

Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 125 mpg with higher gusts. Rita is now a Category Three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. A further slow weakening is possible before landfall, but Rita is still expected to come ashore as a dangerous hurricane.

New Waves of Damage to Louisiana

The first effects of Rita have begun to hit Louisiana already. Areas of New Orleans that were completely devastated by Hurricane Katrina have flooded again:

Hurricane Rita's steady rains sent water pouring over a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans' flooding nightmare.

"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard. "We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly," he said. "At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger."

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Guidry said water was rising about three inches a minute.

Water also poured out from under the canal's western barrier, which faces the historic French Quarter roughly three miles away.

An official with the New Orleans Fire Department said flooding reached a mile inland west of the canal. It also reached as far north as Interstate 10, which divides the city.

The impoverished Ninth Ward was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina's floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before Hurricane Rita struck.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a series of stories about the hurricane, including:

• A "five-day struggle" by guards at Orleans Parish Prison to keep desperate inmates at bay as the hurricane struck New Orleans;
• The repeated uprooting of 3,000 Katrina victims from Calcasieu Parish to Alexandria;
• And also the deep disconnect between what President Bush was saying in his press conference and what is happening among his constituents.

Texas News

The San Antonio Express-News covers yesterday's horrendous traffic jam:

With Hurricane Rita roaring in from the Gulf of Mexico, many of the Houston area's 4.7 million residents bailed out Thursday, creating bumper-to-bumper congestion that stretched up to 100 miles.

"I don't think there's much question. I believe this is the largest traffic jam we've ever had in Texas," said Mark Cross, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation.

Matthew Wheeland is an associate editor at AlterNet.

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