Date:   9/24/2005 9:37:35 AM ( 19 y ago)
Hits:   1,128
URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=273886

Hurricane Rita Rips Onshore Along Texas-Louisiana Border
Saturday, September 24, 2005

BEAUMONT, Texas — Hurricane Rita (search) ripped its way onshore early Saturday morning as a Category 3 storm, pounding communities along the Texas-Louisiana border coastline with high winds and heavy rain. The worst was potentially yet to come however, as the National Hurricane Center (search) warned that the storm could additionally flood the coast with a 20-foot tidal surge.

In the immediate vicinity of the storm's landfall, reports of its impacts trickled in almost immediately. Windows blew out in the lobby of a hotel in Beaumont, Texas, near where the storm made landfall, and shards of glass and pieces of trees were strewn throughout the flooding lobby, KHOU-TV reported. And according to reports as many as 500,000 residents were without power along the Texas coast.

Elsewhere, there were numerous other accounts of damage to structures, including a highway overpass in southwestern Louisiana.

The powerful hurricane's impacts were felt even prior to its official 3:38 a.m. EDT landfall, as the storm wreaked havoc across the region in the hours ahead of its arrival onshore.

Levee breaks caused new flooding in New Orleans (search), and as many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying nursing-home evacuees caught fire in a traffic jam.

In Galveston, Texas, three buildings in the historic district burned after an electric pole apparently fell and the resulting fire was whipped up by impending Rita's blustery winds.
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I'm sure this is just the beginning, we'll hear more as the day wears on.
 

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