Monday, September 19, 2005\r\nTS Rita Watch: Day One \r\n\r\nThis morning, Tropical Storm Rita is lining up to shoot the gap between Cuba and Florida, and should become a full-fledged hurricane later today. In the National Hurricane Center\'s five-day forecast, Galveston is the bull\'s-eye, a scant 70 crow-miles southwest of us here in Beaumont. But it\'s possible for the storm to veer widely, from Brownsville, Texas (the very southern tip of our spade-shaped state) to New Orleans -- an almost unimaginable scenario three weeks after Katrina.\r\n\r\nThe Gulf Coast is jittery, as you might imagine. The storm is still distant, but nobody is waiting until the last minute. People are already talking -- quietly, for now -- about evacuation plans, hurricane survival kits, boarding windows. Here at the paper, we\'ve already taken steps to print our paper in a nearby city -- or to print that city\'s paper should the storm hit there. Today, we begin girding for the possibility of a catastrophic event that affects our readers, preparing to provide as much information as we can in creative ways while also taking steps to prepare ourselves and our families for the coming storm. Already, we see how online information could play a huge role in keeping readers up-to-date in the midst of a hurricane. A hard-copy paper would be just a scrap in the wind. Today, we begin building a list of who will stay to face the storm; tomorrow, we\'ll bring what we might need to survive here for a few days. We even talk about bringing a couple boats, just in case.\r\n\r\nKatrina is still front-page news here, a testament to the storm\'s devastation. Many of Katrina\'s survivors still live among us. I imagine that while we anxiously watch Rita\'s slow roll across the Gulf, these people must be horrified. The most salient solace anyone can offer? The storm is still far away, moving at 12 miles an hour, which seems somehow comforting.\r\n\r\nA storm needn\'t score a direct hit to disrupt lives. A Category 4 hurricane the size of Katrina -- which covered half the Gulf of Mexico at one point -- cuts a destructive swath 200 miles wide. A hurricane tends to be more vicious on its northeastern edge, bad news for us if it does hit Galveston dead-on. So even if we are spared a direct hit, the likelihood of tragedy here is high. At any rate, if Rita hits with significant force anywhere between New Orleans and Corpus Christi, we must tell the story first-hand.\r\n\r\nRight now, we can only wait and prepare. Stay tuned ...\r\n\r\nposting from\r\nhttp://underthenews.blogspot.com/