US continues picking up pieces after Hurricane Rita

Hurricane Rita’s path of devastation along the Texas-Louisiana coast became shockingly clear as rescuers pulled stranded bayou residents out on skiffs and Army helicopters searched for thousands of cattle feared drowned.

Crews struggled yesterday to clean up the tangle of smashed homes and downed trees. The hurricane slammed low-lying fishing villages, shrimping ports and ranches with water up to nine feet deep.

Seawater pushed as far as 20 miles inland, drowning acres of rice, sugarcane fields and pasture.

The death toll from the second devastating hurricane in a month rose to nine with the discovery in a Beaumont, Texas, apartment of five people – a man, a woman and three children – who apparently were killed by carbon monoxide from a generator they were running indoors after Rita knocked out the electricity.

A Texas couple was confirmed killed by an uprooted tree that fell on their home.

While residents of the Texas refinery towns of Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange were blocked from returning to their homes because of the danger of debris-choked streets and downed power lines, authorities in Louisiana were unable to keep bayou residents from venturing in on their own by boat to see if Rita wrecked their homes.

In the refinery town of Lake Charles, National Guardsmen handed out bottled water, ice and food to hundreds of people left without power. Scores of cars wrapped around the parking lot of the city civic centre.

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 pick-up trucks.

Texas put the damage from Rita at a preliminary $8bn (€6.7bn).

At least 16 Texas oil refineries remained shut down. Early estimates were that Hurricane Rita will cost US refiners about 800,000 barrels a day in capacity, on top of a drop about 900,000 barrels a day because of Katrina.

Meanwhile, US President George Bush urged motorists to conserve energy, and said he has directed federal agencies to do the same.

“If it makes sense for the citizen out there to curtail nonessential travel, it darn sure makes sense for federal employees,” Bush said.

“We can encourage employees to car pool or use mass transit, and we can shift peak electricity use to off-peak hours. There’s ways for the federal government to lead when it comes to conservation.”

Bush sent a memo to agency and department heads, saying the federal government must “lead by example and further contribute to the relief effort by reducing its own fuel use during this difficult time”.

He instructed them to report to him within 30 days, describing which steps they took to conserve.

The White House will be looking at ways to cut down its fuel use, press secretary Scott McClellan said, although that doesn’t include curtailing the president’s plans to return to the region this week.