After Rita, Another Exodus

And so Rhoades and his dog boarded one of hundreds of chartered buses that have been loading up area residents and leaving every hour since Hurricane Rita struck Texas's Gulf Coast early Saturday morning. By Tuesday, more than 1,000 people had been transported out of town to San Antonio, with little more than a small bag of clothes, a personal care kit handed out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a brown bag lunch provided by the Salvation Army. At least the bus was air-conditioned.

These latest evacuees are being told they will remain in San Antonio for a week or two. But local officials have said that restoring power after massive outages -- caused by the area's famous huge pine trees toppling onto power lines -- could take four to six weeks. In the meantime, traffic signals are out, hospitals, schools and grocery stores are closed, and only a few gasoline stations, using generators, have opened. Beaumont, a city of 115,000, has no power but does have sporadic water and sewer service. The next-largest city to the south, Port Arthur with 60,000 people, remains dark and dry. Although floodwaters have largely receded, some spots of standing water have provided a breeding ground for hordes of mosquitoes and snakes.

Federal, state and local officials asked residents not to return to the area until basic services have been repaired. Roadblocks are being enforced, although some residents have managed to find back roads to their homes. But that didn't work for Eulalio and Irma Arredondo, who arrived in Port Arthur on Tuesday, out of money and food, after spending two nights at a Houston motel with their four children, including a 4-month-old baby. They were turned away by officers at the entrance to Port Arthur and advised to report here to board the San Antonio bus.

"We don't have family here," said Eulalio Arredondo, who said he and his wife are from Mexico. "We don't have any money left, and we're trying to spend the least we can. We have nowhere else to run."

It was the snakes that did in Etonia Alfred, 47, who arrived at the bus depot with her son, Jordan Gray, 4. Although her sister, nephew, brother and father caught buses out of town just before the hurricane hit, she and her son missed the last bus that left from a high school near their home. She rode out the storm, but her house and its contents were destroyed. Jordan's father, Jackie Gray, welcomed them in after the storm, but the lack of electricity and air conditioning and the snakes inside the house were more than Alfred could bear. A big water moccasin raised its head in greeting when she walked into Gray's utility room on Monday.

Gray took her and Jordan to the San Antonio-bound buses and escorted them inside the coach to say goodbye. They exchanged cell phone numbers, and Gray kissed Jordan. "Bye-bye, love," he said. "Bye-bye, baby. Daddy will be here waiting for you when you get back."

Alfred -- who lost her mother in February, lost her home and furnishings and her job at a barbecue restaurant because of the storm, and still has not located her siblings and father since they left town -- put her head in her hands and cried. And now she was headed for a place she'd never been before, San Antonio.

"I don't know what else to do," she said.

Staff writer Michael A. Fletcher in Washington contributed to this report.