PORT ARTHUR, Texas — From the home of her daughter and son-in-law in Bryan, which is near Port Arthur, Texas, June Bourg is counting her blessings in the wake of Hurricane Rita. After evacuating from her home in Groves, she ended up in Warren, some 60 miles from the coast.

Rita swept in from the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall near Port Arthur Sept. 24. The storm's outer bands reached already-battered New Orleans, helping to push water from Lake Pontchartrain over a repaired levee and into low-lying areas of the city.

Evacuation before the storm was massive, in part due to the effect Hurricane Katrina had on parts of Louisiana and Mississippi less than a month earlier. Rita was predicted to hit land as a catastrophic Category 5 storm. It weakened to a Category 3, however, with winds at 120 miles per hour.

Bourg estimates the worst of the storm lasted “from about midnight until 7:30 a.m. Friday. It felt like a giant was trying to lift the roof off the house.” Noting that none of the 10 people in the house was hurt, she said, “It is miraculous that many of the fallen trees didn't fall the other way.”

Although Bourg feels “broken” inside about the damages to her town and not having any timeline of being able to return, she is full of thanksgiving. “I prayed all night long Friday night and I could feel the prayers of all the people far away praying for us.”

Rita left far fewer dead in its wake than Katrina's more than 1,100 victims. In fact, more people died in the evacuation. A bus carrying mostly elderly people on a traffic-choked highway south of Dallas burst into flames Sept. 23, killing 24 passengers.

Veterinarian David Bessell considers himself “very fortunate” back in his home in Beaumont with both power and water. After evacuating himself and several animals from his clinic to Livingston, he had to return after the storm to bring them out of the flooding in Livingston. A 161/2-hour evacuation covering a distance which would normally take two hours to travel would normally leave him frustrated. But it left him impressed. “Overall, mankind is still good,” he said. “I came in contact with so many nice people who opened their hearts to us.”

Churches Help

Elsewhere in Texas, the Brazos County Emergency Management Team called a meeting Sept. 20 in Austin for the leaders of their volunteer evacuee sites. At that meeting was Richard Head, director of Religious Education at St. Anthony's Parish in Bryan, who took charge of preparing their parish for the 187 evacuees they would receive. Many of these evacuees came from Galveston.

Head praised the parishioners at St. Anthony's. “They did a good job of all coming together on short notice” to help out, he said. He described the five days running the shelter as an “amazing, exhausting experience” and a time when “emotions ran high.”

“We have run many retreats at our parish, but the blessing of having these evacuees with us surpasses them all,” Head said. Speaking about the unity experienced in the parish community by working together to accommodate the evacuees, he added, “What they did for us far outweighs anything we gave them.”

At another evacuee site in town, St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in College Station, 370 people stayed in an area designed to hold 225 people. When parishioner Nancy Baker arrived at the church with supplies Sept. 23 at noon, she found a woman who had been driving 26 hours. After the registration desk informed her they were full, Baker offered to take her and her four companions into her own home.

“They were so delightful, so grateful,” explained Baker. Even though the visitors only stayed three days, Baker fondly admitted, “I feel like I have a new family.”

On the other side of the shelter scene, 20 seminarians evacuated to the Bryan/College Station area under the leadership of Father Dean Wilhelm, Formation Director at St. Mary's Seminary in Houston. Heading out on the morning of Sept. 22, they arrived at the retreat center for the Parish of St. Joseph after a five-hour trip that ordinarily takes 90 minutes.

“Various people brought us food for every meal,” Father Wilhelm said. “People were very generous.”

Most of the seminarians were “not happy” to evacuate, according to Father Wilhelm, but he looks at the evacuation as a great opportunity to teach these future priests about the vow of obedience they will take at their ordination. “It shows them that in the life of a priest, we don't always get to make our own decisions,” he explained.

While admitting there may have been some “overreaction because of Katrina,” he recalled Hurricane Alicia 20 years ago when St. Mary's was left without power for a number of days. Safely back at the seminary after Hurricane Rita, he added, “We made the best decision we could with less than optimal information.”

The homeless have been the focus of many post-hurricane efforts, and Houston-based social worker Natalia Gonzalez knows their plight all too well. She is a case manager for Search, an agency that pairs homeless people with local resources such as shelters and food banks.

“The evacuation [from Hurricane Rita] was hard on the homeless, because they have no way to get out of town,” she explained. “The news stations were encouraging anyone leaving with an open seat to open their door to someone in need.”

Gonzalez, whose job working with the homeless involves finding them basic resources to survive, evacuated to North Houston after her office closed the evening of Sept. 21. Having just moved to Houston at the end of June from Buffalo, N.Y., Gonzalez has never experienced a hurricane. Plus, living across the street from the Houston Astrodome, she experienced Hurricane Katrina second-hand. Overall she admits, “It is the craziest thing, but I'm glad to be a given a chance to help out.”

Niki Kalpakgian is based in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Catholic News Service contributed to this report.