Rita's forgotten victims struggling in East Texas

As a result, people like the Pooles are feeling like Rita's forgotten victims.

''I want to find some kind of normalness," said Kevin Poole, a 37-year-old print shop manager. ''There are thousands of people that are in the same situation that we are in."

''There are people who have got money to pay rent who can't find any places to live," said Orange County Judge Carl Thibodeaux, the top elected official in this county of nearly 85,000, where chemicals, steel, paper, and shipbuilding are the main industries.

Some residents have moved in with relatives or are sleeping in tents, even when the temperatures dip to near freezing at night. Others have decided to live in their damaged homes, where mold grows on everything and ceilings are propped up with two-by-fours.

The Pooles, for example, moved back into one small portion of their leaking home, but the mold made Tanya sick. Her face began to swell. She could barely get out of bed each day to care for her children, could not stand bright lights, and barely could see.

Even when the power came back on, the Pooles lived without lights because it smelled as if the wires were burning when they flipped a switch. When it rained, they might as well have been outside, because the water poured through holes in the roof.

Finally, on Thanksgiving, after numerous pleas to county and state officials, the federal government came through. Two trailers were delivered to the Pooles, who hope to eventually rebuild what once was their dream home.

''If we were a very wealthy county with $50 million, $100 million in the bank, yeah, we'd go out and buy our citizens temporary housing," Thibodeaux said. ''But we don't have that luxury, so the government has got to help."

''We are spending millions and millions of dollars on rebuilding foreign countries," Thibodeaux said. ''Maybe we need to put that on the back burner a little while and take care of our own."

In Jasper County, where the Pooles live, about three dozen homes and more than 60 apartments were devastated by Rita.

Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Frank Mansell said that by early December the agency had received 2,900 requests from East Texas residents for trailers and had filled more than 1,200 requests, delivering about 50 trailers a day.

The state government's hands are tied in helping East Texas residents because local communities must first exhaust any possible federal sources before looking to the state, said Elizabeth Anderson, head of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

Kevin Poole is trying to figure out how he will rebuild. Poole said he could only respond with a smile when his 14-year-old son asked whether Santa Claus could bring the family a new house for Christmas. ''We don't know what is going to happen this year," he said.