Stranded in Port Arthur

By Katharine Mieszkowski Salon.com
Sunday 25 September 2005

OK, it's not Katrina, but at one of the spots widely expected to be shattered by Rita, FEMA and other agencies didn't seem ready for this hurricane, either.

A neighborhood is surrounded by flood waters left by Hurricane Rita in Port Arthur, Texas,

Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005. (Photo: Salon.com)

Port Arthur, TX - Monique Kinlaw, 22, lived in Carver Terrace, a brick federal housing complex with a clear view of a refinery just two blocks from a church that's been blown open to the heavens by Hurricane Rita. The church doesn't have a name visible right now; that part of the sign out front has been destroyed, but another section of the sign still sands, giving this biblical message in black letters: "You do not know what will happen tomorrow. James 4:14."

The now nameless church's blue stained-glass windows have collapsed inward under the gabled roof revealing the chandeliers still hanging inside. Blue glass litters the sidewalk out front.

There's no one here from the church, much less the city, to even begin to think about cleaning it up. Kinlaw doesn't know what will happen tomorrow, but right now she knows she has no food, no ice, no electricity and it's 95 degrees and humid. "We don't have nothing. We're glad to have the water wash our butts. It just came on. This is like a survival game. I thought New Orleans had it back now we got it too."

She and her two friends hanging out outside her building say they couldn't evacuate before Hurricane Rita. "We didn't have the money to leave, we didn't have the gas to leave," says Kinlaw. "It's the end of the month, nobody's got no stamps." Gas is now so scarce here some people are siphoning it out of others cars. Kinlaw and her friends are among the holdouts stuck in a city that usually has 57,000 residents, which maybe has a few thousand now. >>>continued

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