rita.html

	A disabled boy is helped in Beaumont, Texas, by rescue workers where thousands gathered to be evacuated as Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast.

People reach for food provided by the Ching Hai Association of Houston, which dropped into Beaumont , Texas, with food one day after Hurricane Rita ravaged the area. Many of the food recipients were from New Orleans, displaced by Hurricane Katrina almost a month earlier.

On the Texas Gulf Coast
Hurricane Rita displaces residents

Less than a month after catastrophic Hurricane Katrina killed so many and caused so much damage in New Orleans, Hurricane Rita bore down on the Texas and Louisiana gulf coast.

Over 2.5 million people from Houston to Louisiana took evacuation orders seriously, migrating away from the coast in search of safety.

In the end, Hurricane Rita, which had been a category 5 storm, caused much less damage than was anticipated. But lives were disrupted, hearts were troubled, and some property damage occured.

The 2005 hurricane season has been one of the worst ever.

Horses graze in a Southeast Texas field as the swirling clouds of Hurricane Rita loom overhead just hours before landfall.

The downed steeple of the First Church of the Nazarene looms over Heritage Veterans Memorial Plaza in Orange, Texas, one day after Hurricane Rita hit the gulf coast.

Port Arthur, Texas, flooded after Rita hit.

Photos by Billy Calzada
http://www.billycalzada.com

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