The approach of Rita provoked one the largest evacuations in U. S. history. Media reports indicate that the number of evacuees in Texas could have exceeded two million. Additional evacuations involving smaller numbers took place in Louisiana. Seven fatalities have been directly attributed to the forces of Rita. One was due to drowning near Lake Charles, Louisiana; two people died in Hardin, Texas when a tree was blown down onto their home; one person died when a tree fell on her home in Point Blank, Texas; another person was killed by a falling tree in Angelina County, Texas; one person was killed in a tornado near Isola, Mississippi; and one person drowned in a rip current at Miramar Beach in the Florida panhandle on 24 September. At least 55 “indirect” fatalities have been reported in Texas. Six of these occurred in Beaumont due to carbon monoxide poisoning. A bus accident south of Dallas during the course of the evacuation killed more than 20 persons, mostly elderly evacuees from a nursing home. Other persons died during the evacuation due to heat exhaustion. The storm surge of Rita devastated entire communities in coastal areas of southwestern Louisiana, including Holly Beach, Cameron, Creole, and Grand Cheniere in Cameron Parish. Almost every structure in these areas was destroyed, and some were completely swept away. Severe beach erosion occurred at Holly Beach. Several miles inland from the Gulf along Calcasieu Lake, numerous homes in the town of Grand Lake were damaged or destroyed. Many portions of the Lake Charles area suffered substantial flood damage, including downtown and some surrounding residential communities. In Vermillion Parish, dozens of homes and businesses were flooded and damaged by storm surge, and most structures in the town of Pecan Island were destroyed. Storm surge damage to homes and businesses in low-lying areas extended eastward along the entire coast of Louisiana, although the impact in the New Orleans area was not nearly as widespread as during Hurricane Katrina. In Jefferson County, Texas, west of where the center made landfall and adjacent to Sabine Lake, the storm surge flooded several homes, and some mobile homes floated away from their original locations. The surge on Lake Livingston in southeastern Texas caused some damage to the Lake Livingston Dam. Rita also caused some damage to homes and businesses due to storm surge in portions of the Florida Keys. Rita’s winds, tornadoes, and fresh water floods caused damage to many other homes and businesses over a large area including portions of Louisiana, eastern Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and the Florida Keys. Rita caused wide swaths of downed trees and power lines, leaving well over one million customers in these areas without electrical service, some for days or even weeks. Oil and gas production and refining in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico region was disrupted by Rita (largely due to evacuations), but the impacts were not as severe as those farther east due to Hurricane Katrina. The most recent available estimate by the American Insurance Services Group of the insured property damage in the United States caused by Rita is $5.05 billion. Doubling this figure to account for uninsured losses yields a rough estimate for |
