Rita's Evacuees Urged to Stay Away
Services Scarce; Five Die Using Generator Indoors
Shneeka Davis and her children wait in Beaumont, Tex., for a bus ride to San Antonio, where they were to be sheltered at a former Air Force base.
(By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
BEAUMONT, Tex., Sept. 26 -- Along the Gulf Coast near the Texas-Louisiana border Monday, snapped utility poles littered the landscape and more than half a million customers were without power. Floodwaters began to recede, but many homes and buildings remained submerged in the Louisiana bayou.
Officials continued rescue operations for residents cut off by Hurricane Rita's flooding, and military helicopters searched for as many as 30,000 stranded cattle.
Meanwhile, anger grew and tragedy arrived as evacuated citizens clamored to be allowed back to their homes. Five people -- including three children -- died after inhaling carbon monoxide exhaust from a generator they ran in their apartment.
In several Texas communities, including the refinery town of Beaumont and nearby Port Arthur, officials trying to deter an influx of returnees blockaded roads into the towns and pleaded with motorists not to come. But their roadblocks were besieged by irate residents who said they wanted to protect their property and help clean up.
Others who had resisted the massive evacuation before Rita struck Saturday emerged from their boarded-up homes, seeking food and water and also criticizing what they said was a slow effort to return basic services to their communities.
"We thought we had evacuated everybody. Now people are starting to come out," said Michael Ferris, a federal official working at the base set up outside Beaumont to coordinate relief efforts.
The deaths came among a group of eight people who managed to return to their apartment at 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to Officer Crystal Holmes of the Beaumont police. They apparently got into the two-story apartment and started a small generator with no vent to the outside, despite warnings throughout the day on local radio stations for people not to run generators indoors.
"They probably didn't want to put the generator outside for fear it would be stolen," said Holmes, a police spokeswoman, who was on the scene. At 10:40 a.m., a relative knocked repeatedly on the door. A 12-year-old girl stumbled out, vomiting, Holmes said.
"The exhaust was so strong and so thick in the apartment, it overcame emergency workers who were trying to drag out the bodies," she said.
The dead included a boy, 9; two girls, 7 and 12; their aunt, 25; and a man, 47, who was a friend of the family, police said. The man's daughter, who answered the door, survived. The 29-year-old mother of the dead children and an 8-year-old son were airlifted to Houston in critical condition, Holmes said.
Officials pointed to the tragedy as evidence that their pleas for people not to return should be heeded.
"This is another example of why people should please not come back to the city. We don't have the services for them," Holmes said.
