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Texas warns of catastrophe as Rita nears

Posted on: Friday, 23 September 2005, 12:14 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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