Hurricane Rita closed in on the Texas Gulf Coast and the heart of the U.S. oil-refining industry with howling 140 mph winds on Thursday, 22 Sept evening; but a sharper-than-expected turn to the right set it on a course that could spare Houston a direct hit.
The storm's march toward land sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the United State's fourth-largest city (Houston) in a frustratingly slow, bumper-to-bumper exodus. Even with Interstate 45 running only north for 125 miles, highways out of Houston were jammed for miles. Motels hundreds of miles inland were totally booked. Highways leading inland out of Houston, a metropolitan area of 4 million people about an hour's drive from the shore, were clogged for up to 100 miles north of the city.
In all, nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, a 400-mile-wide storm that weakened Thursday from a top-of-the-scale Category 5 hurricane to a Category 4 as it swirled across the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm's course change could send it away from Houston and Galveston and instead draw the hurricane toward Port Arthur, Texas, or Lake Charles, Louisiana. Forecasters predicted landfall for late Friday or early Saturday on the Gulf Coast in Texas or Louisiana.
But it was still an extremely dangerous storm - and one aimed at a section of coastline with the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries. Environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill from the 87 chemical plants and petroleum installations that represent more than one-fourth of U.S. refining capacity.
Rita also brought rain to already battered New Orleans, raising fears that the city's Katrina-damaged levees would fail and flood the city all over again.
At 11 p.m. EDT (i.e. 10 p.m. CDT and 0300 Hrs GMT 23rd Sept), Rita was centered about 350 miles southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 10 mph. Its winds were 140 mph, down from 175 mph earlier in the day. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves, and rain of up to 15 inches along the Texas and western Louisiana coast.
To speed the evacuation, the governor of Texas halted all southbound traffic into Houston along Interstate 45 and took the unprecedented step of opening all eight lanes to northbound traffic out of the city for 125 miles. I-45 is the primary evacuation route north from Houston and Galveston. The traffic congestion extended well into Louisiana, with Interstate 10 jammed from Lake Charles through Baton Rouge. State police said the biggest backups were at exits where cars stacked up in long lines of motorists trying to get gasoline.
In Galveston, a city rebuilt after an unnamed 1900 hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000 residents in what is still the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, the once-bustling tourist island was all but abandoned, with at least 90% off its 58,000 residents cleared out.
The city pinned its hopes on its 11-mile-long, 17-foot-high granite seawall to protect it from the storm surge, and a skeleton crew of police and firefighters to ward off potential looters.
The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.
At Houston's Johnson Space Center, NASA evacuated its staff, powered down the computers at Mission Control and turned the international space station over to the Russian space agency.
Along the coast, petrochemical plants began shutting down and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs.
In New Orleans, Rita's steady rain on Thursday were the first measurable precipitation since Katrina. National Guard and medical units were put on standby. Helicopters were being positioned, and search-and-rescue boats from the state wildlife department were staged on high ground.
The U.S. mainland has not been hit by two Category 4 storms in the same year since 1915. Katrina came ashore Aug. 29 as a Category 4.
