Rita’s death toll climbs to seven

RESCUERS pushed their way into once-inaccessible neighbourhoods as Hurricane Rita’s floodwaters receded along the Texas-Louisiana coast yesterday.

The death toll climbed to seven when five bodies were discovered in a Beaumont apartment.

The five a man, a woman and three children were apparently overcome by carbon monoxide from a generator they were using after the hurricane knocked out the electricity, authorities said.

Rita roared ashore Saturday morning, slamming the refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, as well as Lake Charles, Louisiana, after an epic evacuation that emptied out a large swath of coastline and saved countless lives. Some three million people fled from Rita's path after seeing what Katrina did to New Orleans a month ago.

As of Sunday night, only two deaths had been blamed directly on Rita.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said: "As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape."

Hard-hit towns along the Texas-Louisiana coast began to pick up the pieces.

In Lake Charles, National Guardsmen patrolled the town and handed out bottled water and food to hundreds of people left without power.

Cars wrapped around the parking lot of the city civic centre, picking up food and ice. Hundreds of thousands in Louisiana and Texas are without power.

Dorothy Anderson said she had no time to get groceries before the storm because she was at a funeral out of town. "We got back and everything was closed," she said.

In Terrebonne parish, Louisiana, the floodwaters have begun to recede, but nearly 9,000 homes were seriously damaged.

Authorities had trouble keeping people from travelling through floodwaters in their own boats to discover whether Rita wrecked their homes and livelihoods.

People checking their hurricane-hit homes and towns returned with stories of flooding to the rooftops, coffins and refrigerators bobbing in the water, and stilts where their houses once stood.

LE Nix, whose home was swamped with three feet of water, said: "I had a little piece of paradise, and now I guess it's gone."

It was clear that the misery wrought by Rita was not as bad as Katrina's.

Randy Roach, mayor of Lake Charles, said his hard-hit seaport city of oil refineries and casinos would bounce back.

"I really appreciate everything that the federal government has done to help us," he said.

Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the United States' petrol suffered only a glancing hit from Rita, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs.

Contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north instead of parking over the South for days and wringing itself out with disastrous consequences.