toledoblade.com --

BEAUMONT, Texas - Hurricane Rita bore down on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast last night, pushing tropical winds and a hard rain ahead of a storm center expected to land a direct hit on this refinery city sometime this morning.

As Rita edged toward the coast, rescue crews hustled the last of the evacuees into buses, pointed them north, then prepared to huddle inside shelters.

"One guy asked me what I did to protect my house. I said I made sure I gave my insurance papers to my wife before she went north," said Brad Penisson, a Beaumont fire rescue captain, as he helped the elderly, the infirm, and sometimes the confused and hesitant, into one of dozens of buses.

As the last evacuees left Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, state officials held a press conference in Houston, advising those who have not fled to stay put and ride out the storm.

Roads became difficult to travel - bus drivers at the civic center noted that their vehicles can easily be blown off the road in high winds - and emergency officials said movement has become dangerous, despite indications Rita could weaken into a lower-grade storm.

"This storm is dangerous. We have not disarmed this storm," Houston Mayor Bill White said.

Brent Smithhart, a sheriff's deputy in Jefferson County, Texas, tries to coordinate inmates as they unload food and water at the county jail in Beaumont in preparation for the storm.
( THE BLADE/ALLAN DETRICH )

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He estimated the evacuation along the Gulf Coast was "well into the seven figures." The displacement sent tens of thousands into towns unaccustomed to the influx.

Ninety-three miles northwest of Beaumont, arrivals from the Gulf Coast swelled the population of Lufkin, a town of 33,000, to 100,000, officials said.

Rita jogged slightly north and east from its original path this week, possibly sparing Houston and Galveston the worst hit. But it then threatened the center of the nation's oil and chemical refining industries, setting the stage for possible major disruptions of energy supplies.

"This is about 10 to 11 percent of America's gasoline. It's 30 percent of America's jet fuel. So this is a major impact on the energy supply," said Carl Griffith, Jefferson County judge, the county's chief executive.

As he spoke, Judge Griffith looked from a fifth-floor command center inside the headquarters of Entergy Texas, which volunteered much of its high-rise office building to emergency crews. On the horizon was a major refinery that was still burning off waste oil, sending an inky cloak over Beaumont's harbor and the Natchez River, a key navigational channel that could spill over its banks if Rita maintains any force.

The signs of energy disruption were evident up and down the major roads out of Beaumont and Port Arthur, cities near the Texas-Louisiana line.

Cars and trucks were abandoned on some roadsides, out of fuel, while diesel fuel supplies were diverted to make certain buses and rescue vehicles were drivable. In the town of Buna, 35 miles north of Beaumont, a closed store and gasoline station became a makeshift campsite where dozens of families, low on fuel and with little hope of making it any farther inland, sat and waited.

"If we don't get gas and stuff, we're going to die here on this highway," said Pat Trahan of Groves, Texas, as she lay across a blanket in the back of the pickup she and her husband were driving north when they ran out of fuel. With more than 1 million people fleeing the path of the storm, the Trahans became locked in traffic along U.S. 96, a major artery. It took them 14 hours to travel 60 miles before the Trahans joined a small city of evacuees parked at the service station, where the signs announced grimly, "Out of Gas."

In Beaumont, a final surge of evacuees arrived at the town's civic center, rushing to meet a noon deadline to make a bus. Darren Wallace, who took names and addresses from the evacuees and directed them to a bus, was frustrated that some of Beaumont's 114,000 residents - he guessed that they numbered maybe 1,000 - refused to budge, despite the warning of a possible 15- to 20-foot storm surge and lashing winds.

On several occasions, young pedestrians, one on a bicycle, carrying a 12-pack of beer, cycled through the streets, indifferent to the coming blast.

"I just leave it in God's hands," one young man said as he bicycled toward the harbor front.

Such indifference left Mr. Wallace exasperated.

"All we can do is ask them to leave. If not, we'll pick 'em up in a body bag," he said.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dennis Roddy is a reporter for the Post-Gazette.

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