Gulf Coast braces for Hurricane Rita
NEW ORLEANS – The Army Corps of Engineers raced to patch New Orleans’ fractured levee system Tuesday and residents were forced to decide yet again whether to stay or go as a new, rapidly strengthening hurricane threatened to flood the city anew.
“First it was come back, then it was go,” said Karen Torre, who returned to her uptown home Tuesday to haul away debris and clean rotted food from her refrigerator before leaving again. “We’re just trying to do what they tell us and get a few things done in between.”
The new threat was Hurricane Rita, which strengthened into a 105-mph Category 2 storm as it barreled past the Florida Keys into the Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters said the storm could strengthen to a 131-mph-plus Category 4 and hit Texas by the end of the week. But a slight turn to the right was possible, and engineers warned that even a glancing blow to New Orleans and as little as three inches of rain could swamp the city’s levees.
Thousands of people were evacuated from the Keys and low-lying areas of northern Cuba. On the far side of the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, Galveston started evacuations and officials made plans to move refugees from Hurricane Katrina who had been housed in the Houston area to Arkansas.
Acting FEMA Director R. David Paulison told reporters that the agency has aircraft and buses available to evacuate residents of areas the hurricane might hit. Rescue teams and truckloads of ice, water and prepared meals were being sent to Texas and Florida.
“I strongly urge Gulf coast residents to pay attention” to the storm, he said.
Stung by criticism of the government’s slow initial response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush signed an emergency declaration for Florida and spoke with Texas Gov. Rick Perry about planning for the storm’s landfall.
“All up and down the coastline people are now preparing for what is anticipated to be another significant storm,” Bush said.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco strongly urged people along the Louisiana coast to be prepared to get out. The federal government’s top official in the city, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, said the preparations in and around New Orleans included 500 buses for evacuation, and enough water and military meals for 500,000 people.
“We are praying that the hurricane dissipates or that it weakens,” said Blanco, who declared a state of emergency. “This state can barely stand what happened to it.”
In anticipation of another hurricane, the Corps drove a massive metal barrier across the 17th Street Canal bed to prevent a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain from swamping New Orleans again. Although engineers have left a large opening in the wall to allow floodwater to continue to be pumped back into the lake, it will have to be closed quickly if Rita or another storm threatens.
Government engineers and private contractors also worked around the clock across New Orleans to repair the damage to the system of pumps, concrete floodwalls, earthen berms and canals that protect the below-sea-level city.
In addition, the Corps had 800 giant sandbags weighing 6,000 to 15,000 pounds on hand just in case, and ordered 2,500 more to shore up low spots and plug any new breaches. It was also putting pumps and other materials where they might be needed.
“If New Orleans was directly affected by a Category 1, I would be concerned – I would pull my people out,” said David Pezza, the top geotechnical engineer for the Army Corps. “These levees are greatly compromised.”
Rita’s threat to the levees already forced the mayor to suspend the phased reopening of the city and order a new round of evacuations. In some areas where bars, restaurants and shops were opening their doors for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, people were boarding up windows and getting ready to leave town again.
“I’m worried about getting more rain,” Frank Wills said as he packed up to leave his 150-year-old Creole cottage in uptown New Orleans. “The ground’s saturated, and a lot of the storm drains are clogged up with garbage. If we get much at all, I think you’ll see flooding where you never saw it before.”
Even residents who have already been evacuated once faced the prospect of being uprooted again. At the Cajun Dome in Lafayette, emergency officials arranged to take the 1,000 refugees from the New Orleans area out on buses if Rita tracks north.
“Nobody here even wants to hear the word ‘hurricane’ right now,” said Carlette Ragas, who has not been back to her home on Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, since Katrina and has already enrolled her children, ages 11 and 7, in a Lafayette-area school.
The call for another evacuation of New Orleans came after repeated warnings from top federal officials, including President Bush, that the city was not yet safe because of the lack of full electricity, drinkable water and 911 emergency service.
Nagin ordered residents who had slipped back into still-closed parts of the city to leave immediately. He also urged everyone already settled back into Algiers, the only neighborhood now open to returning residents, to be ready to evacuate as early as today.