Mike's Noise

No good deed goes unpunished

Here is an interesting New York Times article that describes the strain felt by Texans who absorbed hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, and then took a direct hit from Hurricane Rita.

In East Texas, state officials are seeking roughly $1 billion in new federal block-grant money to house people whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Rita.

Texas officials concede that their coast was not pummeled nearly as badly as their neighbors in Louisiana, but they argue that their residents did not evacuate and were now trying to live in squalid, mold-infested conditions.

"I have been to the Ninth Ward," said Mark Viator, chairman of the Recovery Coalition of Southeast Texas, speaking of the most devastated neighborhood in New Orleans. "There is debris in the Ninth Ward, but you don't have people. We say, send the money where the people are."

Henry Bowie, who lives in Port Arthur, a city with high unemployment and many poor residents, is the sort of person Mr. Viator thinks should get federal housing money. His house is a patchwork of broken roofing, and light is visible through the floorboards because the house is off its foundation. Black mold grows up the sides of the walls, but Mr. Bowie, who undergoes dialysis three times a week, remains there with his wife and teenage son.

... Mayor Guy N. Goodson of Beaumont, where thousands of homes were damaged, said he would like to see federal reimbursements for debris removal there rise to 90 percent of costs from 75 percent, equaling what it was in Louisiana. Mayor Goodson said his area suffered inattention because its residents had done the right thing: evacuating and rebuilding without complaint after Hurricane Rita cut its path.

"There is a great disjoinder in people's minds about disaster," he said. "You see wildfires, you see a tornado, and who can forget the pictures of the Ninth Ward. A vast majority of our area is wind damage. And unfortunately from a sensory standpoint, people just don't coordinate these two very similar disasters."

There's much more in the article about the problems Houston is facing, but I chose to excerpt some details about southeast Texas.  I'm a native of that area, and I have seen firsthand the destruction that Hurricane Rita caused.  Like the people living in Mississippi, the sensationalism-driven news media has simply ignored the plight of this area.  But it is real.

A final thought -- all of the people living in water-damaged and mold-infested housing along the Gulf Coast in the wake of these two hurricanes are going to provide doctors and other medical professionals with a living laboratory of diseases and health ailments caused by exposure to mold and chronically damp environments.  Many people (particularly in the construction and insurance industries) have dismissed the idea of mold-related diseases as a fantasy cooked up by greedy lawyers.  We'll see if they change their minds now.

Hurricane Rita Roundup

(My original Rita post is here.)

KBTV, Beaumont Texas

Port Arthur News Web Forum

Groupee Forum about Rita and the Port Arthur Area

UPDATE 9/26/05: Many residents from mid and south Jefferson county are in a huff over the lack of network news coverage of damage in the area.  I also found this frustrating; there was too much time spent on "Houston and Galveston dodged the bullet" stories and only a trickle of information coming out of Jefferson County, mostly from Beaumont.  Coverage of the devastation in coastal Louisiana was better, though.  From the Groupee forum:

I am finding it very frustrating that the big network media are paying so much attention to Galveston and Houston, when the Golden Triangle was the area that was ground zero for Rita.

There are so many communities that WERE in the path of Rita that have received NO coverage. Finding information on them is nearly impossible.

...

I am from Orange and now live in Va. I stayed up all thru the night trying to find out what was happening to Orange and never heard a word on it. I was going crazy with worry when I decided to start e-mailing all the big TV stations. Then finally I started hearing bits and pieces here and there about that region. I guess that lil ole towns like Orange, West orange, ect aren't important enough to report about.

...

The same thing happened to us when we evacuated for Katrina. I live 30 miles south of New Orleans and there was media attention on all the big places...but none of the surrounding areas. I had to wait almost a week before finding out that our house was still standing and ok.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone around the US and around the world for your prayers and concerns for southeast Texas.

The remnants of Rita are now headed into Arkansas and Missouri.  Early reports seem to indicate that southeast Texas escaped without the massive flooding that was feared in the wake of a more intense storm.  Houston and Galveston escaped the brunt of the storm and are reporting mostly wind damage.  However, several fires destroyed buildings in Galveston.  Fires are also reported in Beaumont, Houston, and in southwestern Louisiana.

The Lake Charles, Louisiana area as well as numerous communities on the Louisiana coast had the most problems with water.  Lake Charles officials are still reporting rising water from the Gulf of Mexico, and it is still too early to rule out the possibility of more flooding.

The major oil refineries along the Texas and Louisiana coasts (which total around 25% of US oil refining capacity) seem to have been spared, although there will doubtless be some diminished refining capacity for a while due to wind and water damage.

Authorities in Texas and Louisiana are urging evacuated residents to stay put until roadways are cleared of debris, and water and power services are restored.  Sporadic looting was reported in Beaumont and Houston, but local authorities seem to have stopped it before it got out of hand.

Heavy flooding was anticipated in Port Arthur, Texas, which lies directly on the Gulf Coast, but early reports seem to indicate that the levee and drainage system for lower Jefferson County held back most of the water.  However it is still too early to say for certain that widespread flooding will not be a problem.  Localized flooding on certain roadways and underpasses has been reported, but so far the area as a whole has been spared.

Most of east Texas received torrential rainfall and hurricane-force winds as the storm passed through, but so far no major damage has been reported outside the coastal areas.  And thankfully the storm did not stall over east Texas.

One of the problems emerging in the wake of the slow and frustrating evacuation efforts involved area residents not following the staggered evacuation plan, and not using designated evacuation routes.  Both news reports and my personal correspondence with family in the area confirm this.  It's also important to remember that Beaumont and Port Arthur have no interstate highways that can be used for evacuation.  The state highways in the area are mostly two-lane roads that were never designed to handle the volume of traffic generated by an area-wide evacuation.  One frustrating incident reported by the AP involved Transportation Security Agency workers demanding metal detector searches for wheelchair-bound and bedridden hospital patients before they were loaded onto military transport planes for evacuation.  Your federal government tax dollars at work...

Hopefully, local authorities will learn from these hardships and establish better evacuation plans, perhaps closing major roadways in the southernmost parts of the coastal counties until the northernmost parts are evacuated.  But through all of this, state and local authorities performed admirably, bringing food, water, and gas to stranded motorists, keeping looting down to a minimum, and ensuring the safety of residents who chose to stay behind.  And the utility workers and city cleanup crews will be putting in a lot of overtime in order to make the cities safe when evacuees return.

Despite all the hardships caused by Hurricane Rita, as of this writing there have been no deaths attributed directly the storm.  Again, it's too early to confirm this, but in the wake of the 1000+ who died as a result of the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina, we should all be very thankful that folks took this hurricane seriously.

UPDATE 9/26/05: This AP story lists 10 deaths attributed to the storm:

The death toll from the second devastating hurricane in a month rose to 10 with the discovery in a Beaumont, Texas, apartment of five people _ a man, a woman and three children _ who apparently were killed by carbon monoxide from a generator they were running indoors after Rita knocked out the electricity. In Texas, a couple was confirmed killed by an uprooted tree that fell on their home, and another man was electrocuted as he tried to connect a generator.

... Among the deaths attributed to Rita was a person killed in Mississippi when a tornado spawned by the hurricane overturned a mobile home, and a Texas man struck by a falling tree.

Hurricane Rita - The Heart of Southeast Texas weeps

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has kept Port Arthur, Beaumont, Lake Charles, and the surrounding areas in your prayers. 

(If you are Catholic or you pray to saints, you may be interested to know that a statue of the Blessed Mother stands vigil over the Queen of Peace Shrine and Gardens, built by parishioners of the Queen of Vietnam Martyrs Catholic Church in gratitude for their escape from Asia and the city of Port Arthur, Texas, which welcomed them.  The citizens of Port Arthur and the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast still need your prayers.  Thank you.)

UPDATE:  Rita made landfall around 3:30 AM CDT at Sabine Pass.  According to tracking maps, her eye is now crossing over into Louisiana.  She has been downgraded to a tropical storm.  Here is a link to the AP news story relating details of the storm's landfall.  Here is a local report from the Beaumont Enterprise.  The online forum hosted by The Port Arthur News is still pretty quiet.  I'm expecting more pictures and reports on road conditions and storm damage to start coming in this evening, as the storm passes by.  KBTV, Channel 4 in Beaumont, is online and is reporting 8.5 inches of rain in Beaumont and up to two feet of flooding in localized areas.

Tides rising in the wake of Rita have already caused levee spill-overs in New Orleans, re-flooding areas that had just been pumped dry.

And this moron who tried to go surfing as the storm blew into Galveston should get the "stuck on stupid" award for the week.

** Welcome Michelle Malkin readers and others from around the blogosphere.**

__________________________________________________

Here is a bit of information about Port Arthur, Texas.

Port Arthur is the southernmost city in the Beaumont-Port Arthur region, and I grew up there.  It sits on the Gulf coast, thus giving the Port of Port Arthur direct access to the Gulf of Mexico, and via the man-made Intracoastal Waterway, direct access to Sabine Lake and the Neches River.  The urban triad of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange (which lies on the state border between Texas and Louisiana) has been traditionally known as the "Golden Triangle." (Make sure you click on the link and read about one of our favorite jokes, the attempt to change the name of the metro area to "The Triplex."  Just doesn't sound like southeast Texas, does it?)

The majority of Port Arthurans are African-Americans.  Port Arthur is home to a thriving Oriental community (mostly from Viet Nam) and a large Cajun population, many of whom came to work in the oil refineries during the 1920's and 1030's.  Port Arthur is also home to the now-famous Port Arthur Mardi Gras, which has proved to be a very popular and family-friendly alternative to its booze and boob-laced cousin in New Orleans.

Both Beaumont and Port Arthur rely heavily on the shipping and the petrochemical industries for their economic sustenance.  In fact, Port Arthur was the original home of Texaco, which was called The Texas Company when it was started in 1902 as a refining depot for the brand new crude oil wells being drilled around Gladys City and Sour Lake.  Even today, the Beaumont-Port Arthur area is home to one of Texas' largest oil refining facilities as well as large refineries owned by DuPont, Huntsman Chemical, and dozens of smaller oil and chemical processing facilities. 

I grew up with the smell of petroleum in the air every day.  When visitors complained, we simply told them that it smelled like bread and butter to us.

This is an old shot of the view from my high school parking lot.  Click to enlarge it, and you'll see the refinery stacks and tanks clearly visible in the background.  I remember having to stop marching band practice several times because one of the plants was venting steam, and the noise was so loud that we couldn't hear each other talk.

And here is a shot of Highway 87, as you leave Port Arthur and head for Sabine Pass.  The highway bisects the Motiva refinery.  In the old days, the left side of the road was the Texaco refinery, and the right side of the road was the Gulf Oil refinery.  If you click and enlarge the picture, you can still see "GULF" painted on the landmark brown brick smokestack to the right.

The last truly major storm to hit the area was Hurricane Audrey in 1957.  A category 4 storm, Audrey actually went ashore near Cameron, Louisiana, which is about 30 miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border on Highway 87.  Audrey brought a 12 foot high wall of water through Cameron and literally wiped it off the map, taking with it over five hundred poor souls who refused to evacuate.  The Golden Triangle got hit pretty hard by the storm, but suffered only a few deaths.

The last direct tropical storm hit occurred in 1979, when Tropical Storm Claudette (scroll down) came ashore at Sabine Pass and headed directly for Port Arthur.  Claudette was barely under hurricane strength but she dithered back to the west and did an enormous amount of damage because she stalled over the Golden Triangle area.  I was there for that one, and believe me, even though the sustained winds probably never blew harder than 65 or 70 MPH, just the relentlessness of wind and rain for hour upon hour is incredibly nerve-wracking.

The Texas coastal area has a pretty good drainage and levee system in place, but officials are worried about the devastation that a category 4 or 5 storm could cause.  The Beaumont Enterprise published this timely article a few weeks ago in the wake of Katrina: What If It Happened Here?

Yesterday, Jefferson County and Orange County officials ordered a mandatory evacuation of the area.  As news reports have indicated, the travel conditions around the area are horrendous, with roads clogged, cars running out of gas, and weary citizens rapidly running out of patience.  A few phone calls to family still in the area have confirmed that things are as bad -- or worse -- as seen on TV.  Far too many citizens waited until the mandatory evacuation order before they left.  Hundreds of families spent the night in parking lots and shopping malls in bigger towns north of the coastal area, and even though all major roads have been re-directed to carry only northbound traffic, there is widespread concern about whether or not people will make it out of the area before the rain begins falling tonight.  Today's high temperatures are predicted to be in the mid-nineties, with a heat index reaching over 100.  (Update (9/24/05): Evacuees have filled shelters in larger refuge cities like Lufkin and are being moved slowly north toward Jacksonville and Tyler.  I'll try to get more updates on traffic conditions as I can, but please be reminded that communications to that area will be out shortly.)

Another problem for the Golden Triangle is that the only interstate highway running through the area is I-10, which will take you either to Houston or to Louisiana.  Therefore, the evacuation route from Beaumont-Port Arthur is mostly state highways, some of which are only 2 lanes.  Even major roads like Highway 69 are two lanes for long stretches, so I can imagine how slowly the traffic is moving.

ADDED: Please pray for the victims and families involved in the tragic fire that engulfed a refugee bus filled with elderly as it sat stranded on I-45.  An overheated bus, fuel, and patient oxygen tanks proved to be a deadly combination.

Even with the experiences of Katrina under our belts, it seems like our evacuation plans are still terrible.  God forbid a large area would have to evacuate after a terrorist attack (like a nuke) with no prior warning and no chance to prepare.  (Update 9/24/05: Actually the word coming out of the area is that too many people failed to ignore the staggered evacuation plan and simply scrambled for the highway.  Perhaps next time the authorities will have to close southern roads until the northernmost parts of the counties have begun evacuating.)

ADDED:  My aunt and uncle evacuated Port Arthur and finally made it to Lufkin, where their son and daughter-in-law live.  It took them -- literally -- 24 hours to travel 100 miles.  They ran out of gas and had to be refueled by a Texas Department of Public Safety truck.  Lufkin is already packed with refugees, but they just keep on coming.

Also, gas is already up 15 cents a gallon here in Oklahoma City.  Looks like we'll be seeing $3 a gallon again due to the heavy concentration of oil refining and shipping along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Here are some useful local news links for the area:

Port Arthur News
Beaumont Enterprise
KFDM TV (now off-line)
KFDM Doppler radar (now off-line)

Please keep these good people in your prayers.  This looks like it could be a bad one.

Other blog roundups: Michelle Malkin, Blog Houston, Lone Star Times, Storm Track,  Generation Why?