In receding floodwaters, more damage found

Eligible for federal aid?
A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman said that Terrebonne Parish was declared a disaster area for Katrina but not for Rita. Officials were checking to see if the residents were eligible for Rita help.

With the floodwaters going down, officials turned their attention from rescuing people to saving property, including cattle — many of which were seen swimming in the brown floodwaters.

The Army used Blackhawk helicopters equipped with satellite positioning systems to search for cattle amid fears as many as 4,000 may have been killed in Cameron Parish alone, where ranchers on horseback struggled to herd the animals into corrals attached to pickup trucks.

“Take all the coastal parishes, they all had cattle,” said Bob Felknor, spokesman for the Louisiana Cattlemen’s Association. “It could be more than 30,000 in trouble.”

Texas put the damage from Rita at a preliminary $8 billion.

Tough times for oil refineries
At least 16 Texas oil refineries remained shut down after Rita, which came ashore early Saturday at Sabine Pass, about 30 miles from Beaumont. A refinery in Port Arthur and one in Beaumont were without power, and a second Port Arthur refinery was damaged and could remain out of service for two to four weeks.

“We didn’t dodge a bullet with Rita; we took a couple bullets in the legs with Katrina and Rita,” said Tom Kloza, an analyst with the Oil Price Information Service of Wall, N.J. “It’s still a significant loss, and it’s going to create some supply problems through at least mid-October.”

Early estimates were that Hurricane Rita will cost U.S. refiners about 800,000 barrels a day in capacity, on top of a drop about 900,000 barrels a day because of Katrina. Kloza said the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline could again top $3.

In Washington, President Bush said the government is prepared to again tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease any new pain at the pump, and he urged motorists to cut out any unnecessary travel.

“We can all pitch in by being better conservers of energy,” Bush said.

Smooth re-entry into Houston
Gasoline and traffic were both flowing smoothly as metropolitan Houston continued its second day of a voluntary, staggered re-entry plan, an attempt to avoid the epic gridlock that accompanied the exodus of nearly 3 million people last week.

“It’s not stop-and-go traffic. Everything is flowing,” said Mike Cox, a spokesman for the Texas Transportation Department. He said crews were also making progress in clearing trees and downed power lines from major roads.

In Galveston County, utility crews had restored power to 80 percent of the city when a small aircraft struck two electrical lines Monday, turning out the lights again. "We thought we would have all the power restored when (residents) got back," city spokeswoman Mary Jo Naschke said.

In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin picked up where he left off before Rita with his plan to reopen the Big Easy, inviting people in the largely unscathed Algiers neighborhood to come back and “help us rebuild the city.”

About 300,000 customers were without power in Louisiana, and 450,000 in Texas on Monday, a number cut in half since the storm hit. A spokesman for Entergy, a major utility in both states, said it could be more than a month before some customers have power restored, and rolling blackouts are possible if residents in unaffected areas do not cut back on usage.

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. Two dozen evacuees were killed before the storm in a bus fire near Dallas.

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