Gov. Jay Dardenne and other state and local officials will gather at the Cameron courthouse today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Rita’s landfall.
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-Population: The population in Cameron Parish hasn’t recovered from Rita. While Hurricane Rita was threatening the coast, the Bertsch family was preparing for the arrival of their second baby. The town of Cameron still deals with vacant slabs, weed-choked lots and solitary stairs to nowhere. All that remains of the Klean-N-Kruise vehicle wash is a rusted white si… That’s down to about 6,700 people. “We started working”, LeBlanc said.
Rita struck as a Category 3 hurricane with 120-mile-per-hour winds and a storm surge reaching as high as 20 feet, swamping small towns across southwest Louisiana and ravaging southeast Texas.
Back down on the Coast, Rita, the 4th most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, created havoc washing away seashore and causing some $12 billion in damage.
-Agricultural Damage: An estimated 2,000 square miles of farmland and marshes got soaked with seawater, devastating crops and livestock.
Eleven deaths in Texas and Louisiana were blamed on Rita.
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Sources: The U.S. Census Bureau, The Rita Report, Insurance Information Institute, the LSU AgCenter and Associated Press archives.
