Rita failed to deliver a second catastrophe but it has fed the storm of criticism against the US authorities' response to natural disasters.
Hundreds of thousands of evacuees were stranded on clogged highways when the hurricane hit, while others have found themselves stranded in the disaster zone without assistance days after the storm.
"Our government sucks. They're horrible. You want to know why? Because they don't consider us to be poor here... Bush, he dropped food to foreign countries and he can't get to his own people," said Christina Guerra, 35, of storm-hit Orange, Texas.