Posted on 09/25/2005 3:53:51 PM PDT by Daralundy
PERRY, La. (AP) -- For the storm-shattered Gulf Coast, the images were all too familiar: Tiny fishing villages in splinters. Refrigerators and coffins bobbing in floodwaters. Helicopters and rescue boats making house-to-house searches of residents stranded on the rooftops.
But as the misery wrought by Hurricane Rita came into clearer view - particularly in the hard-to-reach marsh towns along the Texas-Louisiana line - the lasting signs that emerged a day after the storm's 120-mph landfall were of an epic evacuation that saved countless lives, and of destruction that fell short of the Katrina-sized fears.
"As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after taking a helicopter tour Sunday.
Even with nearly 1 million in the region without electricity, some coastal towns flooded to the rooftops and the prospect of nearly 3 million evacuated residents pouring back onto the highways for home, the news was overwhelmingly positive.
Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the nation's gasoline suffered only a glancing blow, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs. The reflooding in New Orleans from levee breaks was isolated mostly to areas already destroyed and deserted, and could be pumped out in as little as a week. And contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north as a tropical depression instead of parking over the South for days and dumping a predicted 25 inches of torrential rains.
Most significantly, deaths were minimal - with only two reported so far - largely because residents with fresh memories of Katrina heeded evacuation orders and the storm followed a path that spared Houston and more populous stretches of the coast.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
As the media cries in their milk because there wasn't a disaster of biblical proportions to spin on about. FNC has had to resort to golf stories.
Well as of 7pm EDT, NYMEX gasoline is trading for 198.15 (cents/gal), about 10 cents below the Friday close. So one little bit of good news.
As for Rita, some say the MSM is underreporting the severity of damage. On Saturday, Governor Blanco demanded that the disaster relief form Katrina and Rita be combined. Could this be a team effort by the Dems and the MSM to hog as much relief money for NO as possible (read: voting base) and the affected 'red' parts of the Gulf Coast be damned?
The coastal areas of Louisiana are a disaster.
So much of the media concentrated on NO for Katrina. There was much more destruction in Mississippi. Journalists can't get out of their hotel.
Being in a state run by democrats is the kiss of death. To be even more precise, most deaths occured in Blue Counties along the Gulf Coast and inland:
I don't think your visual supports your comments very well, since the overwhelming majority of counties along the coast and inland are red.
Rita's Destruction Falls Short of Fears
>>
that is, "falls short of hopes" :0/
New Orleans and the Mississippi State Delta Region (the are along the Mississippi) are all blue and are where most fatalities occured.
Yeah, I'm waiting for the story about how they need to bring in the techies to re-calibrate Karl Rove's "Hurricane Machine".
Race warlords and socialists hardest hit.
Destruction falls short of media's hopes.
The destruction affects more than just East Texas and Southern Louisiana. The whole south of Texas (San Antonio, Austin, Houston) and south of Louisiana (Houma, LaPlace) have been without Roadrunner cable internet and their sister TimeWarner cable tv for more than two hours now. All phone lines to them are overloading their circuits.
It needs to be trumpeted loud and clear: the loss of life in Rita's path was less than that in Katrina's path because the local officials controlling the Texas and southwest Louisiana towns were competent and prepared, unlike those in southeast Louisiana.
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