Lufkin appears to have weathered Hurricane Rita -- or possibly, by the time its eye passed just east of our city around noon Saturday, Tropical Storm Rita -- fairly well.

Numerous tall trees were uprooted or snapped apart across Angelina County, with many of them landing on houses or power lines. But, possibly because Lufkin had a few days warning about Rita’s potential, very few deaths and injuries were reported as a result of the storm.

Much of Lufkin still had electricity as of early Saturday afternoon, but that one situation created cause for concern: The city had just two water wells working at full capacity and another at half capacity, meaning the fire department might not have enough water to respond to a fire.

"We're running, right now, at a minimum for protection from fire," City Manager Paul Parker said. "We have water. We just don't have our full capacity."

He encouraged Lufkin citizens and businesses to conserve water as much as possible until the city gets power restored at its other water wells. That means not even doing laundry, if possible, he said. People and businesses also need to make sure their water sprinklers are not still operating.

Rita toppled trees throughout the city and county, but Lufkin officials had received no reports of homes flooding from the storm's steady rain, Parker said.

City and state crews early Saturday afternoon appeared to be quickly clearing streets blocked by fallen trees, but officials urged people to refrain from driving until the street cleanup was complete and power was restored across Lufkin.

That might be a tough order to follow for an estimated 20,000 hurricane evacuees in town, including hundreds still here from Hurricane Katrina. The Texas Department of Transportation is expected to announce road openings as it clears the highways, while the city of Lufkin will do the same for roads in town that were blocked.

"TxDOT is encouraging nobody to be on the roads, but we can't stop people from leaving (town)," said Lee Miller, media spokesman at the city's Emergency Operations Center. "If somebody's wanting to leave a shelter, it's totally up to them."

City officials said Lufkin is set up to hold 10,000-plus people in its shelters, which include city facilities and local churches, but that several thousand more people were in town staying with family and friends.

Hurricane tracking projections for the last couple days had Rita's eye pointed at Lufkin, but she veered east before she arrived. The cities of Jasper, Hemphill and San Augustine appeared to have suffered the most damage from the storm, according to city officials.

Miller said Lufkin was on the "fortunate" side of Rita, because the highest damage from a hurricane usually comes on its east side. Lufkin was prepared for the storm in large part because it was no surprise that Rita was headed this way, Parker said. But it was still a serious storm when it reached Angelina County.

"Usually we don't have the ‘luxury' of know a storm's coming," Parker said. "If we weren't a Category 1 (hurricane), we were right at it. I would assume we were very close to hurricane status."

Herbert Bickley, the city's emergency communications supervisor, said Lufkin 911 operators receive an average of 109 calls a day. On Friday they got 1,202, and that doesn't include calls that automatically forwarded to the city's administration offices or those made directly to the Emergency Operations Center.

At least two evacuees died in Lufkin shelters this week, including an elderly woman who died of natural causes while she was with her family at the George R. Henderson Exposition Center. The expo center became a shelter Friday night for 800 evacuees, and a local church opened its doors at the last minute to house hundreds more people.

Another evacuee died on the trip into Lufkin. Her husband had to drive four to five hours with her body because he couldn't pull off the highway, according to Fire Chief Pete Prewitt.

Sam Price, the city's medical services coordinator, said the biggest issue for Lufkin's hospitals Saturday was the lack of electricity. Without it, the hospitals could not run air conditioning or operate their imaging technology.

Price said the city was surprised by the number of special needs patients it received as part of the evacuation of cities south of Lufkin, but that those people were being consolidated at the Pitser Garrison Civic Center for treatment.

Medical teams of doctors and nurses were also going to the emergency shelters in town to treat people, Price said.

Lufkin on Saturday afternoon was already starting to get patients from the Jasper area, Price said.

Now that Rita has come and gone, city officials said, the hard work of cleaning up the damage begins. In addition to the debris spread by the hurricane, Parker said, the city's also going to have to pick up the mess left by evacuees at places around town that looked like "a tailgate party at a football game."

Andy Adams' e-mail address is aadams@coxnews.com.