Rita Storms Ashore With Wind, Rain And Fire

Hurricane Rita plowed into the Gulf Coast at 2.30 Central Time Saturday morning, buffeting Texas and Louisiana with high wind, driving rain and the threat of flooding in the low-lying region.

The eye of the storm made landfall over Sabine Pass and the refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, but Houston and indeed Glaveston seem to have been spared the worst of the storm. By daybreak, Rita had been downgraded to a Category Two hurricane - still enough to cause widespread damage but certainly not as lethal as had been feared.

Reports are begining to come in of prominent buildings - schools, police stations and the like - damaged or destroyed by high winds. For every such report there must be dozens of homes destroyed. Flash flooding (rather than storm surge) is now being reported in Beaumont and points North and pretty much the entire East Texas border, in a swathe more than 100 miles deep, is under a flood watch. That doesn't bode well for the hundreds of thousands of motorists who may no longer be actually on the freeway but are huddled in impromptu shelters or are camped in their vehicles at rest stops.

Over 750,000 people are without power and power shorts are causing another problem - electrical fires whipped up by the winds into infernos. In Pasadena a shopping center was engulfed, in Galveston firefighters could do little but watch as winds fanned a three building fire in the historic Strand and in Houston at least one apartment block was destroyed. Other fires are also being reported - but because the area is evacuated almost always not until the blaze has taken a major hold.

So far, the biggest casualty in terms of property has been poor, abused New Orleans where storm surge and heavy rain overwhelmed levee repairs and flooded areas which had just been pumped dry after Katrina. And at least in terms of property, a lot of people (Sen. Kay Hutchison among them) have voiced relief that the major refinery complexes around Houston and Galveston were not badly hit.

As to loss of life, its too early as yet to have any clear idea - but it seems that Rita has been far kinder coming ashore than she could have been.

PS Here in San Antonio - in marked contrast to what we were being warned of a few days ago - we are now being told by our weathermen that we may not even see any rain from Rita, let alone winds. As the days went by the track slipped further East and San Antonio was given a pass.