Hurricane’s change of course spared the big cities and oil installations

In contrast to Katrina’s 1,000-plus toll, the only confirmed death from Hurricane Rita was a person killed when a tornado overturned a mobile home in the Mississippi town of Belzoni. But 23 nursing home evacuees died in a bus crash before the storm began and rescue crews were still searching flooded areas of Vermilion Parish, west of New Orleans, where hundreds of people were feared stranded. More