Rita slams Texas, swamps La.

BEAUMONT, Texas -- Hurricane Rita slammed into the Gulf Coast early yesterday and churned north, uprooting trees, ripping off roofs, and leaving more than a million people without power. The oil centers of Houston and Galveston were largely spared, but low-lying coastal areas along the Texas-Louisiana state line suffered extensive flooding and wind damage.

By last night, the only reported death was in Mississippi, where one person was killed by a tornado that spun off the remains of the hurricane. Officials in Texas and Louisiana voiced cautious optimism that the evacuation effort that sent more than 3 million people fleeing ahead of the storm had paid off a month after Hurricane Katrina killed more than a thousand in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Still, damage from the second major hurricane to hit the region in a month was intense, and officials urged evacuees not to return to hard-hit areas for a day.

Beleaguered New Orleans, still vacated from the Katrina disaster, took only a glancing blow, with less rainfall than expected. But the storm was still enough to flood the impoverished Ninth Ward neighborhood once again after a recently repaired levee gave way. By late afternoon, National Guard helicopters were again dumping sandbags into the reopened breach.

Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana said her state had been dealt a ''harsh blow" by the back-to-back hurricanes, but vowed to move forward.

''We have been struck with another very strong hurricane," Blanco said. ''Rita has compounded Louisiana's pain. We're hurting from the west side to the east side and all parts in between. . . . She set back the work of repairing New Orleans, but we're going to regroup. We'll regather our forces and focus once again on rebuilding."

President Bush flew from the US Northern Command in Colorado to Austin, Texas, yesterday, where he urged evacuees to obey the request of Houston's mayor, Bill White, that they not come home for another day in order to keep the roads clear. More than 1.5 million people had evacuated from the Houston area alone, jamming highways and depleting gasoline supplies.

''It's important to delay your trip home so that essential personnel are able to get to affected areas," Bush said.

In Beaumont, 35 miles west of where the eye of the storm plowed ashore, winds had torn off thousands of roofs, smashed storefronts, flung uprooted trees into buildings, and tossed newspaper vending machines into the street. Downed power lines snaked across wet streets and a Jack in the Box restaurant sign had crushed a Jeep. Police arrested several suspected looters.

''It looks like a war zone," said Carl Griffith, the top elected official in Jefferson County.

In the afternoon, Christus Hospital-St. Elizabeth on Calder Avenue evacuated the 120 remaining patients because they did not have any water. More than 80 ambulances lined up to bring patients to Houston. The physicians, pharmacists, and nurses followed in a bus to care for them.

''We want to be sure that we maintain their safety," said Mary Eagen, chief nurse executive.

In hard-hit Jasper County, north of Beaumont, most back roads were rendered impassable by downed pine and oak trees that snapped like matchsticks in the howling wind. Power lines dangled dangerously over roads or lay across them, and nearly every building appeared to have been damaged.

At Buna Medical Center, 35 critically ill nursing home residents lay on beds that had been wheeled into a darkened hallway where they had been placed to ride out the storm.

The nursing home operated with just a quarter of its staff yesterday, owner Wayne Butchee said, as a steady stream of rainwater dripped onto the floor from leaks in the roof, forming dirty puddles near the kitchen and in some of the rooms. The only power came from a generator, which Butchee, 78, said he would operate only at night.

Butchee said he did not have the option to evacuate the residents. Mindful of the bus accident near Dallas on Friday, in which 24 nursing home patients fleeing Rita died when the vehicle caught fire, Butchee said he thought his steel-reinforced concrete building was a safer alternative.

Still, residents who weathered the storm at the medical center recounted a night of fear. Among them was Ross Dennis, 67, who sat in the waiting room with his family, an oxygen tank at his side.

''This is my first hurricane, and believe me, it'll be my last," Dennis said. ''When they say there's a hurricane coming off the coast of Africa, I'm going to Oklahoma."

While rain and flooding were the principal challenges in most areas in the storm's path, several parts of Texas also endured fires. In Galveston, three historic buildings burned in the early morning hours; one woman suffered second- and third-degree burns, and two firefighters had minor injuries, Fire Chief Michael Varela said. Fires also broke out at a two-story apartment building in Houston and a shopping area in nearby Pasadena, but no injuries were reported.

Across the Louisiana state line, scores of roads were rendered impassable because of downed trees, power lines, and in some cases, entire roofs blown off homes. Jefferson Parish, which escaped serious flooding in Katrina, was heavily flooded, as were sections of Cameron, Vermilion, and Terrebonne parishes.

''At least every levee in the parish was breached," Terrebonne Parish emergency director Michael Deroche said. ''We have 7, 8 feet of water on all the low-lying roads of the parish."

Flooding was severe in Vermilion Parish, where the stormwater in the town of Erath had pushed raised mausoleums into houses a block down the road. But at Shoots's Lounge in Erath, nine regulars were still carrying on their hurricane party from the day before as the water rose up to their waists.

Though the patrons have boats, they all planned on staying. When sheriff's deputies arrived to offer rescue, Brenda the bartender gently escorted them to the door. ''We love y'all but --" she said as she closed the door.

The mood was far more sober in Lake Charles, where a handful of residents who refused to evacuate emerged in the late morning and found downed power lines, fallen trees, and pockets of flooding. The wind had pushed six large barges and many sailboats against a train trestle in the city's downtown lakefront. Roofs had been shorn off and storefronts completely collapsed.

Rescuers used boats to pluck people from their rooftops on tiny Pecan Island, in the marshes not far from the gulf. Dozens of others were rescued from flooded communities south of New Orleans, including a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old son who were plucked from a rooftop by a Coast Guard helicopter in Port Lafourche.

''I've never seen it this bad," said Sherry Adam, 55, of Lafitte. ''This land will be gone in no time."

In New Orleans, a Chinook helicopter dropped enormous white sandbags on a vast breach in the Industrial Canal that had reflooded the city's Katrina-devastated Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Engineers and state officials warily watched the rest of the city's weakened levee system, which was still managing to hold back wind-driven surges from flooding other neighborhoods recently pumped dry.

A few residents and rescue workers gathered on the Clairborne Avenue Bridge to get a glimpse of the resubmerged Ninth Ward. Some said it was an insult to the already injured neighborhood, while others said if flooding had to occur, it was best in a place that had nothing left to lose.

''We walked this entire Ninth Ward for search and rescue," said Eric Baum, a Miami-Dade County firefighter who came to New Orleans a week ago to relieve the first wave of Hurricane Katrina rescue workers. ''It looks different [now]. This is what the first guys saw. It's come full circle."

Meanwhile, Blanco said she would ask Bush to fund a proposed new program she called ''Family Recovery Corps." She said the program would train and employ 400 or 500 Louisiana citizens to help victims from both hurricanes navigate the bureaucratic web of benefits offered by both government and private charities.

Blanco said the program would ''not be inexpensive," but it was necessary because the disaster zone from the two hurricanes was so massive that ordinary relief-coordination efforts were overwhelmed.

An aide said that the state had been working on the proposal since Hurricane Katrina and that it was hoped that many of the program's employees would be evacuees.

''Our family liaisons will help cut through the red tape, hopefully more quickly and efficiently than the situation we've been dealing with," she said.

Asked whether the Bush administration supported Blanco's proposal, Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's principal federal officer for both hurricanes in Louisiana, demurred. ''I don't know all the details of it," he said. ''I will be looking at it and would be consulting with policy folks I deal with in Washington."

Savage reported from Baton Rouge, La., MacQuarrie from Jasper, Texas, and Sacchetti from Beaumont. Beth Daley of the Globe staff contributed from New Orleans. Globe correspondents Keith O'Brien, Julien Gorbach, and Lindsey Winder contributed from Lake Charles and Vermilion Parish. Material from Globe wire services was used.