No Power, Little Help and Too Many People

Hunter said that there is a major military base, Fort Polk, about 60 miles from Jasper and that it could provide military police for security and a generator to bring power to the town. "We're trying to reach them, but bureaucracy holds things up," he said. "While things go through channels, people are suffering."

At Jasper Junior High School, Rita's howling winds turned off the power about 1 a.m. Saturday, as 440 evacuees cowered in the hallways.

"We could hear the windows shatter around the school, and the pressure was making water in the toilets spill all over the bathrooms," said Cotrena Barnes, 38, who works at a Sam's Club store in Houston.

She and her husband, their six children, her mother and a brother had no intention of spending a bit of time in this town. They live in Houston, in a low-lying area that Mayor Bill White had ordered evacuated.

They followed orders. But after 16 hours of crawling north in the worst traffic jam in Texas history, they ran low on fuel and discovered the charms of Jasper.

A police officer directed them to the junior high, which was filing up with lost souls.

"It's okay here, I guess," said Barnes, whose family had brought along food for a couple of days on the road. "But there are no lights; the toilets are backed up. It is not what the kids are used to. We need hot food, baths and information. We are clueless. We don't know anything about how we will get out of here."

Back home in Houston on Saturday, the mayor was on television much of the day, congratulating his city for having dodged the hurricane and noting that bayous in low-lying areas of the city had not flooded. As it turned out, nobody who lived in those areas needed to flee.

Hearing this, Barnes ran her hand over her tired face and blamed her family's predicament on the fear created by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans less than a month ago. Katrina, Barnes said, motivated everyone in her family to want to flee Rita.

"I hate to say it, but I think we did the right thing by evacuating," she said. "You never know what can happen."

Down the dark hallway of the junior high, Lucretia Hopper, 60, who is in a wheelchair because of spastic paralysis, said she and her husband, Clarence, had made a huge mistake by leaving Beaumont on Friday to try to outrun Rita.

"This was supposed to be such a bad storm, but I learned from one of the police that there's a good chance my house in Beaumont is fine," Hopper said.

She slept on Friday night in her wheelchair in the school hallway. She said she has severe sores on her legs and needs to find a bed. (The police say they are hoping to get some cots but do not know when they will arrive.) Her husband slipped this morning on a wet floor in the school cafeteria and hit his head. He slept much of Saturday afternoon, and his wife said she was worried he was "not right."

"We probably should have stayed home," Hopper said. "We wouldn't have had electricity, but at least we would have been home. I have a special bed and a special bath, and I need them."

At police headquarters late Saturday afternoon, Hunter said all the evacuees would be moved that night into one school, where they can get better service and where the police will not have to expend as much manpower for security.

"We were not prepared for this," Hunter said. "These people aren't supposed to come here."