2A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 26, 2005 NATION/WORLD Hurnicane Rita falls short of fears NEWS IN BRIEF Ellis Schouest, 73, gets a drink at his home at Cypremont Point, La., where he was trying to salvage some of his belongings yesterday, following Hurricane Rita. Floodwaters rose two feet inside the house. He and his wife Flavia have lived there since 1957, just before the first of many hurricanes hit their home. But they refuse to move. "We're poor people. We can't do anything else," Ellis said. PERRY, La. (AP) - For the storm-shattered Gulf Coast, the images were all too familiar: tiny fishing villages in splinters. Refrigerators and coffins bob- bing in floodwaters. Helicopters and rescue boats making house-to-house searches of residents strand- Hurricane ex WASHINGTON (AP) - The 14-hour lines of traffic fleeing Houston - complete with cars that ran out of gas - show that four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, it is difficult to evacuate a major metro- politan area. Experts say the consequences could be far more deadly in the event of a radiological or other ter- rorist strike. "The nightmare that we all have is that, God forbid, there's a terrorist attack of some kind on a major American city that requires evacuation with- out warning," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, (D-Conn). "We need to be better prepared," Lieberman, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said on CNN's "Late Edition." President Bush has ordered the Homeland Secu- rity Department to review disaster plans for every major metropolitan area. Experts say the slow pace of evacuations in Houston and New Orleans show the need for changes to get people out of harm's way in a more urgent emergency. "You have to accept the possibility that a major portion of the people will be left behind," said ed on the rooftops. But as the misery wrought by Hurricane Rita came into clearer view - particularly in the hard-to-reach marsh towns along the Texas-Louisiana line - the lasting signs that emerged a day after the storm's 120- poses evacua Roger Cressey, a former anti-terrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "You may have to write some of them off in far larger numbers than people realize." Cressey said the answer is not simply giving local governments more money to improve emergency operation plans. Lawmakers said they plan to address the issue. "You would think four years after 9/11 with bil- lions of dollars spent to improve our emergency preparedness that the response to Katrina would be far crisper, far better coordinated and not marred by failures at all levels of government," said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Cressey said there must be plans in place to move the poor and disadvantaged. Thousands of them were left behind in New Orleans after Katrina. At least two people have died as a direct result of Rita - a man in Texas hit by a falling tree dur- ing the storm and woman in Mississippi killed in a tornado spawned by Rita. And 23 people died dur- ing evacuation, when a bus carrying nursing home mph landfall were of an epic evacuation that saved countless lives, and of destruction that fell short of the Katrina-sized fears. "As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after taking a helicopter tour yesterday. Even with nearly 1 million in the region without electricity, some coastal towns flooded to the roof- tops and the prospect of nearly 3 million evacu- ated residents pouring back onto the highways for home, the news was overwhelmingly positive. Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the nation's gasoline suffered only a glancing blow, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs. The reflooding in New Orleans from levee breaks was isolated mostly to areas already destroyed and deserted, and could be pumped out in as little as a week. And contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north as a tropical depression instead of parking over the South for days and dumping a predicted 25 inches of torrential rains. Most significantly, deaths were minimal - with only two deaths reported so far - largely because residents with fresh memories of Katrina heeded evacuation orders and the storm followed a path that spared Houston and more populous stretches of the coast. Along the central Louisiana coastline where Rita's heavy rains and storm-surge flooding pushed water up to nine feet in homes, more than 100 boats gassed up at an Abbeville car dealership Sunday before venturing out on search-and-rescue missions to find hundreds of residents believed to have tried to ride out Rita. About 500 people were rescued from high waters along the Louisiana coast in the immediate aftermath of the storm and emergency calls were still coming in from far-flung areas near the Gulf of Mexico. ion problems evacuees caught fire. Experts said authorities must be prepared to turn two-way streets and highways into one-way evacuation routes with maximum traffic flowing out of the city. Many people fleeing New Orleans and Hous- ton were stuck in traffic jams while the side of the highways leading into the city went virtually unused until the end of the evacuation. "I think we need to fine-tune the planning so that contra-lanes are open earlier so that all the outgoing traffic can go on both sides of a free- way earlier than was done in Rita," said Sen. Kay; Bailey Hutchison, (R-Texas). "I think that will be our added lesson for Rita from Katrina," she said on ABC's "This Week." White House press secretary Scott McClellan on Saturday rejected the notion that there were Iproblems with Houston's evacuation and said the president was told it had gone well. He also stressed that states are responsible for evacua- tions, although the federal government has a role to assist local officials. TEHRAN, Iran Iran calls U.N. resolution illogical Iran's foreign minister called a resolution by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that puts it just one step away from possible Security Council sanctions "illegal and illogi- cal" and accused the United States yesterday of orchestrating the measure. Separately, in a letter to Iran's ultraconservative President Mahmoud Ahma- dinejad, some 180 out of 290 lawmakers called on his government to cancel Iran's voluntary suspension of nuclear activities and scale back cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The resolution passed Saturday by the IAEA board could lead to Iran's referra to the U.N. Security Council for violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty - and possible sanctions - unless Tehran eases suspicions about its nuclear activities. Iran insists its nuclear program is designed for generating electricity. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the resolution "polit- ical, illegal and illogical" and threatened unspecified punitive measures against Britain, France and Germany - the key three European countries negotiating with Iran. KABUL, Afghanistan U.S. helicopter crashes, kills five people A U.S. military helicopter crashed yesterday in a mountainous area plagued by Taliban violence, ki'ling all five American crew members. The U.S. mili- tary said there was no sign it had been shot down. The crash of the Chinook helicopter is the third this year involving the large troop-carrying choppers that have proved essential in battling a rein- vigorated insurgency in remote, largely inaccessible parts of Afghanistan. A purported Taliban spokesman claimed the rebels shot down the CH-47 helicopter, but U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts said, "Indications are there wasn't any hostile fire." He said the chopper was part of a convoy of aircraft in the area and other pilots did not see it come under fire. WARSAW, Poland Exit polls show Polish ousting government Exit polls showed Polish voters ousted the nation's scandal-prone government of ex-communists in parliamentary elections yesterday, giving a broad majority to two center-right parties that have promised tax cuts and clean government. Prime Minister Marek Belka's defeated government had said it would withdraw. Poland's troops from Iraq by Dec. 31, though it might keep some officers there as advis- ers. The challengers said they might be open to keeping them there longer if a "new contract" can be negotiated with the United States. BELFAST, Northern Ireland Irish Republican Army fully disarms, aide says International weapons inspectors have supervised the full disarmament of the out- lawed Irish Republican Army, a long-sought goal of Northern Ireland's peace process,, an aide to the process' monitor said yesterday. The IRA permitted two independent witnesses, including a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, to view the secret dis- armament work conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States, the aide to retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain said on condition of anonymity. - Compiled from Daily wire reports CORRECTIONS The Sigor Ros concert review in Wednesday's issue of the Daily misidenti- fied the band's most recent album as "Takk" when, in reality, the band's latest album is titled "Tekk." Also, the song identified as "Untitled One" was actu- ally "Vidrar vel til Loftarasa." "Mind Over Grey Matter," which ran in Friday's edition of the Daily, misiden- tified the time of the David Lynch event. It actually began at 7 p.m. Sunday, not at 5 p.m. as the article stated. Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@michigandaily.com. RIe Alkbiganaailg 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com 01 JASON Z. PESICK Editor in Chief pesick@michigarndaily.com 647-3336 Sun-Thurs. 5 p.m. - 2 a.m. JONATHAN DOBBERSTEIN Business Manager business@michigandaily.com 764-0558 Mon-Fri. 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. r. --= ==- - -- I I 1 Healthy, medication-free 1 1 volunteers, ages 18-45, 1 I are needed for a research I I study involving visits to U I I of M hospital and blood I 1 draws. IRB# 1992-0248. I Compensation may be up1 to $200. 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