Chaos before the storm

Impact of Rita is felt before landfall as 24 nursing home residents who fled die in bus fire, waters gush in New Orleans, and Texas braces

BY TINA SUSMAN | STAFF WRITER

September 24, 2005

Hurricane Rita became slightly less powerful but no less fearsome Friday as it bore down on the Gulf Coast, causing death and damage even before Saturday's expected landfall.

On a Texas highway jammed with people fleeing the storm, 24 nursing home residents died when their bus was engulfed in flames and explosions.

In New Orleans, still struggling to emerge from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina last month, there was more bad news: Water was gushing over newly patched levees that had been breached during Katrina, and floodwaters again were entering the city.

"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard, as New Orleans' Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish took on water. The situation was not nearly as dire as after Katrina, when breaches in levees protecting New Orleans from the network of canals surrounding it flooded 80 percent of the city.

By Friday, Louisiana's death toll from Katrina had reached 841, pushing the U.S. total to 1,079 from the storm.

This time, nearly everyone had evacuated New Orleans, and the patched levees were holding for the most part. But as Rita's outer bands brought new rains, the swollen canals began pouring over sandbags and gravel in sections of two levees. There were fears that if Rita, a Category 3 storm with winds of 125 mph, moved farther east, it could bring a new round of devastation to New Orleans.

Wherever it strikes, forecasters warned that Rita's wind currents indicated it would stall just after landfall, drenching some areas with as much as 2 feet of rain.

As of Friday afternoon, the storm had taken aim at the oil and chemical centers of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, about 75 miles east of Houston. Texas' emergency management coordinator, Jack Colley, predicted Rita would destroy nearly 5,700 homes in the state and cause $8.2 billion in damage.

"We're going to get through this," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. "Be calm, be strong, say a prayer for Texas."

On Wednesday, Rita's strength soared to the highest possible level, Category 5, with winds up to 175 mph, prompting evacuation orders for nearly 2 million people on the Texas and Louisiana coasts and causing massive traffic tie-ups.

The bus, carrying residents of the Brighton Gardens nursing home near Houston to safety, erupted into a spectacular fireball about 6 a.m. in clogged traffic on Interstate 45 near Dallas.

The Dallas Sheriff's Department said about 45 people were on the bus when a mechanical fire broke out, then set off explosions when it spread to oxygen canisters that some passengers relied upon for breathing.

Sheriff's Sgt. Don Peritz said the victims ranged in age from 79 to 101 and that 17 people were pulled to safety. Four remained hospitalized Friday night.

"The majority of the bus melted," Peritz said. "In my 25 years here, I have never seen anything like this - of this magnitude of victims - short of an aircraft accident."

Officials were trying to determine who was on the bus that burned because investigators had received only one manifest of residents' and staff members' names for two buses that left Brighton Gardens.

Evacuation routes leading north and west of Houston, which had been jammed since late Wednesday, began to clear Friday, but not before some frustrated drivers gave up and turned around.

Houston police officer Brian Terry said his wife and two children spent hours in traffic Wednesday before returning home. Low on gas, they decided to ride out the storm instead of seeking refuge elsewhere.

"It took them nine hours to get only a few miles down the road," Terry said. "We're just going to bunker down in an apartment."

Off Interstate 45, cars waited in lines more than a half-mile long to replenish gas tanks emptied by hours in stop-and-go traffic. Mary Coltzer, 68, of Galveston said it took her more than 24 hours to go 61 miles and that she and several other cars full of evacuees had spent Thursday night in a parking lot.

She didn't know where she would spend Friday night.

"Anyplace there's hot water, rest rooms and a piece of clean floor to sleep on," she said.

This story was supplemented with reports from special correspondent Martin Evans and news services.