Rita pummels Gulf Coast, floods New Orleans

LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana - Hurricane Rita has left the US Gulf Coast reeling from two powerful storms in less than a month, with renewed flooding in New Orleans, widespread power outages and roads across hundreds of miles closed by debris, although damage was less than feared.

The storm slammed into lightly populated swamplands at the Texas and Louisiana border, sparing Houston, the fourth-largest US city, but battering the oil city of Beaumont, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, a gambling and chemicals centre.

One storm-related death was reported in Belzoni, Mississippi, where police said a person died in a tornado.

Several neighbourhoods in New Orleans were flooded again, less than a month after levees breached during Katrina and submerged much of the city that remains largely deserted. Katrina killed more than 1000 people, mostly in Louisiana and Mississippi.

"Katrina was the wash cycle, Rita was the rinse cycle. I hope we get time to hang on the line and dry and not go into the spin cycle," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said at a news conference.

Some refiners in the region's huge oil industry were hopeful they would find little harm from Rita, but damage to oil rigs offshore was less clear.

"The damage is not as severe as we expected it would be," said David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in Washington, who credited the evacuation of more than 2 million people with preventing storm deaths.

But he acknowledged problems that included traffic jams as long as 100 miles leading out of Houston. Two dozen elderly evacuees were killed on Friday when their bus burst into flames south of Dallas.

Game wardens and other emergency workers used boats, airboats and helicopters to try to rescue about 600 people who defied evacuation orders and stayed behind only to be trapped by floods in the heart of Louisiana's Cajun country, in Abbeville, Pecan Island and Lafitte. Several were plucked from the rooftops of their submerged homes.

High winds continued to push high water inland, making rescue attempts by boat or helicopter perilous, Vermilion Parish Sheriff Mike Couvillan said.

"We're risking lives to save their lives when they had an opportunity to leave," he said.

The city of Lake Charles suffered a prolonged pounding as the storm's center passed nearby. Lake water washed into the mostly deserted downtown and a huge container ship was torn from its moorings. Barges ricocheted off each other and slammed into an overhead bridge of an interstate highway.

The airport was badly damaged, officials said, and residents were asked to stay away for at least 48 hours.

Beaumont, Texas, where the US oil age began with the Spindletop oil well in 1901, was also hard hit by Rita. Its warehouses and other light buildings all but disappeared, although a feared storm surge never occurred, officials said.

"This is an emotional and devastating experience," said Capt. Melissa Ownby of the Beaumont Police Department. "We've had hurricanes, but we've never had this much devastation."

Authorities in Texas pleaded with residents to delay going home and said gridlock was starting again as people began to return to the densely populated Houston area.

"Be patient, stay put," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. "There are still concerns over flooding, fallen debris." Texas authorities issued a plan to stagger the return of the evacuees over the next three days.

2 MILLION WITHOUT POWER

Rita cut power to more than 2 million people in Texas and Louisiana, already devastated by Hurricane Katrina on August 29.

The storm made landfall with 193-kph winds and punishing rains as a Category 3 hurricane. It weakened as it moved inland and by early afternoon fell to tropical storm status, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Pat Powell, of the Port Arthur Police, said he was sure his house directly in the storm's path in Sabine Pass, Texas, was destroyed. But he said: "My family's OK, so I'm not worried about the house. I never liked that house that much anyhow and I've got insurance."

Refiners were starting to tote up the damage to their refineries, many of which appeared at first glance to have survived relatively unscathed.

But it appeared significant damage was done to at least one refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, and at two refineries in Lake Charles, where 4.6-meter storm surges swept ashore.

Rita and Katrina knocked out nearly all energy production in the offshore oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico and 30 per cent of the US refining capacity onshore.

Rita caused US$2.5 billion to US$6 billion in insured losses in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, three major catastrophe risk modelling companies said. That was far less that had been feared earlier in the week, when Rita was a Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico with 281 kph winds.

But the twin blows of two harsh storms dealt a severe setback to hundreds of miles of coastal areas.

"Rita has compounded Louisiana's pain and we are hurting from the west side to the east side and significant parts in between," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. She urged federal relief efforts for the two storms be combined.

Late on Saturday, US President George W. Bush issued disaster declarations for Texas and Louisiana, clearing the way for the federal government to provide financial assistance.

(Additional reporting by Matt Daily in Houston, Mark Babineck in Port Arthur, Ellen Wulfhorst and Michael Christie in Baton Rouge, Andy Sullivan in New Orleans, Kenneth Li in Beaumont and Daisuke Wakabayashi in Austin)

- REUTERS