The sun didn’t rise on Saturday, September 24, 2005, in Orange County. Instead, dim light grew brighter to reveal a changed landscape and lifestyle. Hurricane Rita moved through during the night, leaving damage that few could imagine. As people reflect on the tenth anniversary of the storm, they can wonder: What was worst? The evacuation, the storm or the aftermath?
KOGT’s Gary Stelly rode out the hurricane with a group of friends at the house of Peter Cloeren in Little Cypress. Though the radio station was off the air for a couple of days, Stelly managed to write about and photograph the storm and its aftermath. The information was posted on kogt.com website and later compiled into a book.
The National Hurricane Center report says more than two million Texans evacuated before the storm along with some Louisiana residents. The Rita evacuation is considered the largest U.S. evacuation in history. Traffic didn’t move at all on some highways. The temperature outside went past 100 degrees. People couldn’t run their car air-conditioners without overheating their cars. Dealers ran out of gasoline to sell and people ran out of fuel while in their cars.
The Hurricane Center reports seven direct deaths from Rita and an additional 55 indirect deaths. Those include 49 people dying during the evacuation, including more than 20 senior citizens traveling in a bus that caught fire.
Stelly reported that County Judge Carl Thibodeaux called the mandatory evacuation at 6 a.m. on Thursday, September 22. The Rainbow and Veterans bridges closed at 8 that morning. The first evacuation notice included southern Newton County.
Even with the slow traveling, an estimated 80 percent of people left town. Stelly and the late Richard Corder stayed on the air at the radio station Friday morning. Then by 12:30 in the afternoon, they were ready to buckle down. The original prediction was for a storm surge to hit the county and put six to eight feet of water on Green Avenue and inundate Bridge City. The wind gusted throughout the afternoon and the electricity went off after 4:15 p.m. Some people wouldn’t get electricity back for weeks.
The National Hurricane Center reports the eye of the storm went through the Texas-Louisiana border, right through Orange County. The eye landed on land at 2:40 a.m. Stelly recalled the eye went over the house in Little Cypress at 4:15 a.m. He and his friends tried to drive out, but all the streets in the neighborhood were blocked by trees.
Unofficial gauges in Orange, according to the Hurricane Center, recorded sustained winds at 94 miles per hours with gusts of 115 miles per hour. People who stayed said the wind was so loud they couldn’t hear the huge trees crashing around them. Stelly said he was afraid the roof of Cloeren’s house was “going to pop off like the top to a can of Pringle’s.”
Cloeren brought a bulldozer to his house, so the group was able to get out into the community. Still, they had to cut their way out of the neighborhood. Fallen trees blocked almost every road throughout the county. The trees had also crashed through houses and buildings. Orange Mayor Brown Claybar once compared the aftermath to Christmas. “Every house had a tree in it.” Stelly and others recalled a strong smell of natural gas all through town. The fallen and uprooted trees had broken the gas pipes. Eventually, gas service was turned off to prevent fires and explosions.
The heat returned as soon as the clouds blew by. Temperatures again climbed around 100 degrees for days. People didn’t have electricity to run fans or air conditioners. In addition, cities had no running water or sewer service. Swimming pools full of debris offered a few their only baths after long sweaty days of trying to clean up. The nights didn’t offer relief. Mosquitoes and bugs swarmed when the sun went down. Inside houses, people tossed and turned in sweat in sleepless nights.
Gradually, people returned to town. Once again, they learned to line up. Charity groups brought in food, water and ice for daily give-aways. Sometimes people waited in their cars for blocks, though they were glad to enjoy the air conditioned air in the cars. “FEMA” became the most mentioned word in the county.
Out-of-town roofers and tree cutters descended on the county. Piles of trees and stumps from uprooted trees ended up by the sides of roads. Eventually grappling trucks would pick them up. Acres off Interstate 10 east of FM 1442 were piled with mountains of tree debris that was gradually chipped down.
Orange County survived and people became experts on hurricane survival. The winds of the tropical cyclone ended up blowing from the north through the county. Aerial photos would show a pattern of the downed trees. The predicted flooding from a surge didn’t come because of that northward wind. It would take another three years, and Hurricane Ike, to teach people what a surge can do.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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