With Aid Slow to Come, Texas Towns Are on Their Own
By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005; Page A10
....Rita arrived on Saturday, but it took days for some of the hardest-hit rural communities, such as this town of 1,400 just north of the oil refineries in Beaumont, to receive help from federal or state emergency management agencies. Criticism of the slow response after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast had federal and state officials here promising to roll food, water and other supplies quickly after Rita made landfall. But with the promised aid slow in coming, many local officials in the path of the storm said they were fending for themselves in the first days after Rita's arrival.
Within hours of Rita's landfall where the Texas-Louisiana border meets the Gulf of Mexico, Texas and federal officials working in the state capital, Austin, said help was on its way. They said tons of food, water and ice, ferried in a long line of trucks, were on the way to a sports arena near Beaumont, where they would be distributed in nearby communities.
But many officials said the supplies were a long time in coming. Connor said he made repeated calls to Jasper County disaster planners, federal agencies and even local highway commissioners before two U-Haul loads of food arrived Monday afternoon, followed by two loads of FEMA-supplied water and ice. On Tuesday, Conner and several sweat-soaked officers were handing out cases of water and dripping bags of ice to a line of cars that snaked around a high school parking lot. An oak tree, snapped at the trunk, lay across the crushed bleachers of the football field.
Some affected areas received food and ice on Sunday. But it was late Monday before the Federal Emergency Management Agency had all 16 of its planned distribution centers operational in the nine-county disaster area. In some communities, overwhelmed police and fire departments said they had been left on their own....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802122.html
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