Texas warns of catastrophe as Rita nears

By Mark Babineck and Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Texas officials warned of a catastrophe
and water spilled over levees to flood parts of New Orleans
anew on Friday as Hurricane Rita barreled toward the U.S. Gulf
Coast with winds reaching 135 mph (217 kph).

The unprecedented mass evacuation of the region turned
deadly when a bus carrying elderly evacuees fleeing the
hurricane along a major escape route south of Dallas burst into
flames and killed an estimated 24 people.

“Be calm, be strong, say a prayer for Texas,” Texas Gov.
Rick Perry said in the state capital of Austin.

Rita was expected to make landfall early on Saturday near
the Texas and Louisiana border, the National Hurricane Center
said. It said the Category 4 storm may weaken to a Category 3
by landfall, but would still come ashore as a major hurricane.

In New Orleans, water spilled over a freshly patched levee
into a hard-hit neighborhood as Rita’s outer edge dumped rain
on a city left nearly deserted after Hurricane Katrina’s
devastation last month. Rising winds shook light buildings as
far away as Baton Rouge and tornado warnings were in effect for
parts of Louisiana.

In Texas, the storm would cause a “catastrophic flood”
likely to inundate the city of Port Arthur under an 18- to
22-foot (6- to 7- meter) storm surge, said Jack Colley, the
director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. It
would affect 5.2 million Texans, destroy 6,000 homes and have
an initial economic impact of $8.2 billion, he said.

He predicted 16 hours of hurricane-force winds where the
storm hits, as well as an onslaught of medium-sized tornadoes.

The bus accident turned a historic evacuation already
delayed by endless traffic jams into a nightmare. It caught
fire in the early morning darkness on Interstate 45 south of
Dallas and closed the highway. The vehicle’s charred hulk
blocked lanes, with a long string traffic stuck behind it.

The bus was carrying elderly and infirm evacuees from South
Texas, said Sgt. Don Peritz of the Dallas County Sheriff’s
Dept. About 15 people were removed before the bus became
engulfed in flames and an estimated 24 people did not make it
off.

Oxygen tanks used by many passengers exploded as the fire
spread in multiple blasts, lighting the morning sky near a
southern suburb of Dallas.

“It’s obviously a horrific event. The whole city is very
upset about this. We’ve handled two waves of evacuees now.
We’ve never had anything this horrible happen, so it’s really a
tragedy,” Dallas Mayor Laura Miller told CNN.

HISTORIC EVACUATION

As authorities struggled to complete one of the largest
evacuations in U.S. history in the final hours before Rita’s
landfall, the problems underscored that despite years of
planning for a major emergency after September 11, 2001,
attacks, a fast evacuation of a large urban area cannot be
ensured.

More than 2 million people were leaving the Gulf coastal
areas and Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city with a
metropolitan population of 4 million, was deserted, with stores
closed, roads emptied and few people on the streets.

People trying to escape Houston crowded inland-bound
highways and sat for hours in enormous traffic jams on Thursday
and struggled to find gasoline. Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell
Plc. said its stations in the area had run out of fuel.

People who had not left by midday Friday were advised to
stay in their homes.

“Those people at risk should not get on the highways to
evacuate. People should prepare to shelter in place if they
have not evacuated.” Houston Mayor Bill White said.

As of 11 a.m EDT (1500 GMT), Rita’s center was about 220
miles southeast of Galveston and about 210 miles (338 km)
southeast of Port Arthur. With hurricane-force winds extending
85 miles from its eye, the storm was moving northwest near 10
mph (16 kph) toward the southwest Louisiana and upper Texas
coasts.

The storm could bring a storm surge of 20 feet and up to 20
inches of rain in spots, the National Hurricane Center said.

A hurricane warning was in effect along a 450-mile (724 km)
stretch from Port O’Connor, Texas, to Morgan City, Louisiana.

HEAD NORTH

In Louisiana, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, Gov.
Kathleen Blanco pleaded with residents in low-lying coastal
communities to head north. She recorded an automated telephone
message, sent to more than 400,000 households, saying:
“Hurricane Rita is heading your way.”

Katrina killed at least 1,069 people and displaced as many
as 1 million.

President George W. Bush, criticized for a slow federal
response to Katrina, planned to visit Texas on Friday to view
the emergency preparations.

Rita threatened the region’s massive oil industry, which
was still recovering from Katrina.

The amount of U.S. petroleum product production offline due
to refineries shut down because of approaching Hurricane Rita
total about 2.2 million barrels per day for gasoline, 1.2
million bpd for distillate fuel and 600,000 bpd for jet fuel,
according to the Energy Information Administration.

(Additional reporting by Matt Daily in Houston, Bernie
Woodall in New York and Allan Dowd in Baton Rouge, Andy
Sullivan in New Orleans)