Wet Bank Guide

What you're not seeing or hearing on CNN or MSNBC or FOX News, as their talent stands around in coastal Texas:

ABBEVILLE (AP): Hurricane Rita swept ashore today with a powerful surge of seawater that swamped coastal communities and vast stretches of farmland from the Texas line to the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Rescuers scrambled into boats and helicopters to reach hundreds of stranded residents who chose to ride out the storm. The hurricane, which struck near the Texas-Louisiana line and weakened as it churned to the north, also inundated small towns, sugarcane fields and marshes with heavy rain.

Floodwaters stood nine feet deep near the southern Louisiana town of Abbeville, about 25 miles inland, while Cameron Parish deputies farther west watched appliances and what appeared to be parts of homes swirling in the waters of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Nine feet of water at Abbeville means that Rita has swamped the Cheniers, ranks of higherland where most residents of south-west Louisiana make their homes. There is no levee system protecting most of Louisiana west of the Atchafalaya River.

A report on WWLTV.Com states: "In southern Louisiana, authorities had trouble reaching stranded residents because of blocked roads and savage winds. Rescuers in boats were pulling hundreds of residents from flooded homes along a remote stretch of swampland stretching between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico as seawater poured over levees and into homes. Floodwaters stood 9 feet deep near Abbeville.

Rita, like Katrina, has left those with the least influence in Louisiana to suffer it's wrath. Like the poor hotel workers of New Orleans, those who keep America's oil machine running are left out in the storm while their masters in Houston "dodge the bullet."