Hurricane Rita, the "forgotten hurricane"

On September 24, 2005, Hurricane Rita roared ashore between Sabine Pass, Texas and Holly Beach, Louisiana.  Had she hit in another year, she would have been the strongest storm of the season, but this was 2005.  Less than a month earlier, Hurricane Katrina, less powerful than Rita, devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi coast, killing over 1800 people and causing well over one hundred billion dollars in damage.  That year saw three of the six most powerful Atlantic storms recorded: Wilma was #1, Rita #4, and Katrina #6.

With the horrors of Katrina still painfully present, people in Rita’s path decided to flee.  Contra-flow measures were initiated but much too late.  With millions of people hitting the road at the same time, disaster was almost assured.  Huge traffic jams formed and a bus with nursing home residents caught fire near Dallas, Texas.  Twenty-three people lost their lives in the blaze.  The evacuation killed almost as many people as the hurricane.

The small coastal community of Cameron, Louisiana, sat directly in Rita’s path and the storm destroyed forty percent of the structures in the parish.  Miraculously, Cameron suffered no casualties but ten years later, the community has yet to recover.  Prior to Rita, the parish population hovered around 10,000.  Presently, less than 6700 inhabit the town.

Rita also flattened Holly Beach, Louisiana, another town struggling to recover a decade later.  As a result, the Louisiana legislature implemented new building codes, including mandates to elevate homes in flood-prone areas.  Three years later, when Hurricane Ike came through, houses built in the post-Rita era, weathered him with minimal damage.

The lessons learned in 2005 were hard ones and failing them brought us out of our complacency.  Unfortunately, those lessons were unnecessary.  The Department of Homeland Security’s Hurricane Pam scenario, carried out a year before Katrina let the Republican occupied White House know that New Orleans would not withstand a storm rated Category 3 or higher.  Inaction on the recommendations went unheeded and almost two thousand people paid the price.