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Perry admits flaws in Rita evacuation

AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Rick Perry on Monday acknowledged that the evacuation of some 2. 7 million Texans was flawed and said a state task force would study how to improve future evacuations.

"While I consider the evacuation to be a success," Perry said at a Capitol press conference, "I believe we can learn from this experience and do it better the next time."

Perry said he was working with Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels on naming the task force soon. He said the membership would include representatives from around the state because mass evacuations could be necessary for other potential calamities, including another powerful hurricane or a terrorist attacks.

As Hurricane Rita's floodwaters receded along the Texas-Louisiana coast, cleanup crews were busy moving debris from streets and traffic into Houston moved steadily throughout the day as evacuees returned home. The number of deaths blamed on Hurricane Rita rose to seven after five people were found dead in a Beaumont apartment, apparently due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Rita roared ashore Saturday morning, slamming the refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, as well as Lake Charles, La., after an epic evacuation that emptied out a large swath of coastline.

Perry announced that he sent a letter to President Bush urging that the federal government reimburse Texans for Hurricane Rita-related expenses at the same level it's reimbursing the state for Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has told Texas that Rita-related expenses for debris removal and emergency protective measures would be reimbursed at 75 percent of total eligible costs incurred after the first 72 hours. FEMA is reimbursing the state 100 percent of some expenses related to Hurricane Katrina, which sent tens of thousands of evacuees into Texas.

Perry argued that preparations for Katrina refugees also were necessary for Hurricane Rita and that the storms should be considered one natural disaster.

The difference in reimbursements could means billions of dollars to Texas if the early projection of $8.2 billion in damages from Rita holds up. Perry said Monday he had no reason to question that figure.

Residents fleeing Rita told tales of spending 12 hours or more getting from the Gulf Coast to safety — and many ran out of gasoline because of the traffic jams.

Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw admitted he was wrong when he assured motorists that extra fuel would be available for their evacuation. He said officials had 100 refueling vehicles on the road but they did not anticipate the trucks being caught so long in traffic.

"We saw it did not go flawlessly," Perry said of the evacuation. Instead of trying to place blame, Perry said he would focus on "how we can do it better."

U.S. Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said over the weekend that the early evacuation was the right thing to do but that future evacuations could be handled differently.

"When 2 million people are trying to leave a pretty narrow area, we probably ought to be looking at changing the highways over more quickly so they're all going out," she said.

Michael Lindell, a professor at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University, said it would have been difficult for officials to predict that cars would clog roadways Thursday rather than Friday, because people usually don't respond so quickly to evacuation orders. He said more research is needed on human behavior in evacuations: When will people be packed and ready to get on the road? How many cars will each household will take?

"The problem is that we can predict storms with much better accuracy than we can human behavior," Lindell said. "We can't tell how a population is responding until they're out on the street, and by that time it's extremely difficult to manage an evacuation."

Returning home

Major highways to the coast remained uncongested Monday as evacuees from the barely grazed Houston area made their way home.

In the badly damaged Golden Triangle area farther east, officials closed most exits off of Interstate 10 in and around Beaumont and Orange. Disaster officials were prohibiting residents from returning there to allow emergency workers elbow room and to protect people from dangerous situations.

Starting today, residents of Chambers, Liberty, Polk, Tyler, Jasper, Newton and Orange and the rest of Angelina and San Jacinto counties will be allowed to return home. Residents of Hardin and Jefferson counties still may not return.

"There's quite a bit of wind damage and they've got a problem with electricity and water supply, so they're not encouraging people to come back" to that area, said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who visited Beaumont on Monday.

A core of about 600 workers from various Texas Department of Transportation divisions, called to the area in advance of the storm, had managed to clear debris from about 75 percent of the large and small state roads in Jefferson and seven other nearby counties.

Farther north, in Polk County, state officials early Monday reopened the U.S. 59 bridges over the Trinity River, about five miles downstream from Lake Livingston Reservoir. The bridge had been closed as a precaution early Sunday because of heavy water releases from the lake designed to ease pressure on the lake's damaged earthen dam.

By lowering the lake level five feet, state officials said the dam would remain stable as repairs proceed.

Parks damaged

Millions of dollars of damage from Hurricane Rita has forced 20 state parks in Southeast Texas to close, including Martin Dies Jr. State Park, about 50 miles north of Beaumont.

Giant pines downed by the storms blocked every road leading into the park and damaged the nature center buildings, several cabins and screened shelters, said Tom Harvey, a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Rita, which made landfall at Sabine Pass, about 30 miles from Beaumont, was particularly hard on the two parks that flank abine Pass, Sabine Pass State Park to the east and Sea Rim State Park to the west, Harvey said. Much of the $2 million invested in improvements in 2004 at Sabine Pass was lost, he said.

Harvey said Parks and Wildlife called in an additional 50 wardens from other areas of the state to patrol and to assess damage at the park system in Southeast Texas. Wardens have arrested four or five people for looting in the parks and were responsible for evacuating about 1,500 people who were staying at Lake Livingston State Park about 50 miles north of Houston, Harvey said.

Beaumont deaths

The five people found dead Monday morning in a Beaumont apartment — a man, a woman and three children — apparently were overcome by carbon monoxide from a generator they were using after the hurricane knocked out the electricity over the weekend, authorities said.

The apartment deaths were discovered Monday morning when a woman went to check on her relatives, Beaumont police spokeswoman Carman Apple said.

When the woman knocked on the door, a 12-year-old girl ran out of the door, vomiting. Inside the apartment were the bodies of three siblings — a 9-year-old boy, a 7-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl. Their mother and 8-year-old brother survived, but were hospitalized in critical condition.

A 25-year-old woman identified as the children's aunt also died, along with her 47-year-old boyfriend. His daughter was the girl who fled the apartment. She also was in critical condition.

Among the deaths attributed to Rita was a person killed in Mississippi when a tornado spawned by the hurricane overturned a mobile home, and an East Texas man struck by a falling tree. Twenty-three evacuees were killed before the storm hit when a bus caught fire near Dallas.

Caution pays off

As Southwest Louisiana shifted its focus from rescue to recovery, state and federal officials credited the region's evacuation preparations for Hurricane Rita with the lack of looting or deaths.

No hurricane-related fatalities were reported in the hard-hit parish of Calcasieu, for example, and no more than 17 people had been arrested there through Monday for looting, said Jason Barnes, a spokesman for Lake Charles, the seat of Calcasieu parish.

Unlike the aftermath of Katrina, in which Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans received criticism for inviting residents back a week after that hurricane struck, officials here have taken a cautious stance.

"Our infrastructure has been devastated, and we're asking residents of Calcasieu Parish not to return," Hal McMillin, a parish police juror, said. Nearby Cameron Parish is still blocked off to anyone other than emergency and Army personnel.

"It's a tough situation for Southwest Louisiana," McMillin said. "But the people of southwest Louisiana are tough."

Mary Landrieu, a Democratic senator, said she was satisfied so far with FEMA's response. But she added that the state still had to resolve "pocketbook issues" with the federal government as it restores its energy industry.

At least 75,000 customers in Lake Charles have lost power because of damage to transmission lines, and power may not return for weeks, said Renae Conley, CEO of Entergy Louisiana.

"If it takes two weeks, we're going to stay two weeks," said Raven Ellis, 20, who had come back to Lake Charles after leaving for the storm. "We don't want to evacuate again."

Laylan Copelin and Corrie MacLaggan write for the Austin American-Statesman. Staff writers Asher Price, Mark Lisheron and Ben Wear and the Associated Press contributed to this report.