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East Texas recovers from Rita

Austin American-Statesman:

Not everyone has electricity, and school won't start again until Wednesday. But in this town of 1,200 on the Louisiana border that endured some of the worst of Hurricane Rita's winds, football season is in full swing.

On a crisp night last Tuesday, much of the town turned out to watch the red-suited Deweyville Pirates take on the East Chambers Buccaneers, a game that would have been played on a Friday if Rita hadn't forced a condensed football season.

The band director, who evacuated because of the hurricane, hadn't returned home, but one student organized about half the band to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" and other tunes at the game.

"It's Texas," explained the student, 15-year-old trumpet player Eric Brinson. "We do this."

More than a month after Rita roared through Southeast Texas, causing massive power outages and strewing tons of debris along highways, life is slowly returning to its usual autumn routines, from small towns like Deweyville to larger communities such as Beaumont and Port Arthur....

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Some 1.5 million Texas households lost power after Rita, which damaged or destroyed nearly 100,000 homes and caused an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion in damage. Dozens of Texans died, many because of heat exhaustion, when about 2.7 million coastal residents sat in gridlocked traffic during mass evacuations. The damage and death toll would probably have been worse had Rita hit Houston head-on, as expected. Instead, the storm turned east, making landfall at Sabine Pass.

This heavily wooded part of the state still bears the scars of the recent hurricane — trees snapped in half, blue tarps on roofs, road signs bent at 45-degree angles — and throughout the region, workers from all over the country are busy removing debris, fixing power lines and traffic lights and repairing homes and businesses.

There is much more.