Covering Rita from the beginning

[Leader]

This is likely to be a major event so I figured I'd start a thread to cover the preparation, the landfall itself, and the aftermath. There was a lot of hindsight thinking after Katrina. There are two days til this one hits. So let's all show a little foresight or post some articles that show some foresight. No wondering into this thread Sunday or Monday saying that this person of that is an idiot for not doing something if you weren't here shouting for it today and tomorrow.

I'm going to post any articles I find on this topic. I encourage others to do the same.

[Leader]

Reading this article at the source is recommended:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170105,00.html

'Preparing for the Worst'

Thursday, September 22, 2005

GALVESTON, Texas — Although Hurricane Rita (search) was downgraded to a Category 4 storm Thursday afternoon as it swirled toward the Gulf Coast with sustained winds measured at 145 mph, more than 1.3 million residents are fleeing Texas and Louisiana.

"It's not worth staying here," said Celia Martinez as she and several relatives finished packing up their homes and pets to head to Houston. "Life is more important than things."

• Click here to track Hurricane Rita.

• Click here for more information on hurricane categories.

An estimated 1.8 million residents or more in Texas and Louisiana were under orders to evacuate to avoid a deadly repeat of Hurricane Katrina (search).

Traffic on some of Texas' main arteries was at a virtual standstill Thursday morning as people tried to move inland from the coastal areas. Drivers ran out of gas in 14-hour jams or looked in vain for a place to stay as hotels hundreds of miles in from the coast filled up. Others got tired of waiting in traffic and turned around and went home.

"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Julie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. "They say we've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn't prove it by me."

Texas authorities were to begin airlifting at least 9,000 people from Beaumont and Houston, including nursing home residents, those without transportation and the homeless, to inland Texas cities. Military troops in South Texas also started moving north and schools, businesses and universities were closed.

"This is a big, dangerous storm. It's a massive storm. It covers half of the Gulf of Mexico. It is still very unpredictable," said R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (search), in a news conference Thursday afternoon.

But preparations were going smoothly, he added.

"The evacuations are going very well," Paulison said. "We still feel we have plenty of time to get those people out of harm's way before this storm makes landfall sometime tomorrow."

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry (search) urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating well in advance of Rita's predicted Saturday landfall, outer bands of rain began lashing New Orleans on Thursday, the first rainfall since Hurricane Katrina, raising fears that the patched-up levee system could fail and swamp the below-sea-level city all over again.

"I've never seen a storm like this. This is worse than, it looks like it's worse than even Katrina," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, who lives 45 miles in from the coast in Sugarland, told FOX News Thursday morning.

A tidal surge of 15 to 20 feet was expected from Corpus Christi, Texas, to south-central Louisiana.

Engineers say a 10- to 12-foot surge was required to overtake the levees at 17th Street and the London canal in New Orleans. But in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, a surge of 5 to 6 feet was all that was needed to swamp the area again.

"This is a big storm and it's really important for our citizens on the Texas coast to follow the instructions of the local authorities," President Bush said Thursday. "Officials at every level of government are preparing for the worst."

The Category 5 (search) storm weakened slightly Thursday to a Category 4, and forecasters said it could be down to a Category 3 — meaning winds as high as 130 mph — by the time it comes ashore late Friday or early Saturday.

It also made a sharper-than-expected turn to the right late in the afternoon, on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit and send it instead toward Port Arthur, Texas, or Lake Charles, La., at least 60 miles up the coast.

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 industrial plants and storage installations that represent more than one-fourth of U.S. refining capacity.

"Don't follow the example of Katrina and wait. No one will come and get you during the storm," said Harris County Judge Robert Eckels in Houston.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 405 miles southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 9 mph. Its winds were near 140 mph, down from 175 mph earlier in the day. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore somewhere along a 350-mile stretch of the Texas and Louisiana coast that includes Port Arthur near the midpoint.

'Today is the Day to Leave'

Galveston, Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County, low-lying parts of Houston, and New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Category 5 Rita drew energy from balmy gulf waters.

It was taking people 10 to 12 hours to navigate Houston's freeways.

To speed the evacuation out of the nation's fourth-largest city, Perry halted all southbound traffic into Houston along Interstate 45 and took the unprecedented stop 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.

Police officers along the highways carried gasoline to help people get out of town.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told FOX News that some businesses are already taking advantage of the emergency situation and participating in price gouging.

"Unfortunately, we have already received reports [of price gouging] on gasoline, hotel rooms, car rentals — a variety of other things people need," Aboott said, noting that whereas a 6-pack of water normally costs less than $2, some businesses are now charging up to $7 for that product.

"It's very important for businesses and people in Texas to understand, there are very stiff penalties for this price gouging," including fines of up to $20,000, he added.

Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas told NBC's "Today" show Thursday that her city is "fairly well emptied, but we're sending our police forces ... with their loudspeakers reminding people that today is the day to leave."

In Houston, Mayor Bill White said residents in low-lying areas and in mobile homes should leave immediately.

"We're the best prepared city in the country but nothing of this magnitude is welcome," he told ABC's "Good Morning America." "There's not much you can do if you have 150-mph winds."

Forecasters said Rita could be the strongest hurricane on record to ever hit Texas. Only three Category 5 hurricanes, the highest on the scale, are known to have hit the U.S. mainland — most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

A spokesman with the Homeland Security Department told FOX News Thursday morning that Texas local and state authorities had a good idea of what the storm may bring and noted that, in comparison with Katrina preparation, mass evacuations in Texas were called for three days from when landfall was expected, whereas mandatory evacuations in Louisiana were only announced 24 hours beforehand.

"When the evacuation is called has a significant bearing on what happens after the storm makes landfall in terms of human life and the federal government's role," the spokesman said. "When people don't evacuate, the federal government has to go into rescue mode and that can jeopardize the lives of crews. "

The spokesman also said the federal government is well prepared to deal with two huge storms and their aftermath at once. "We have the capacity to focus on both, Katrina and Rita, as well as any other man made security threats. The resources are there," he said.

Bush declared a state of emergency in Texas and Louisiana. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has designated Coast Guard Rear Adm. Larry Hereth as the government's pointman for Rita response and recovery in Texas. Hereth will be based in Austin and will coordinate federal government activities with state and local officials.

Hereth has a reputation "for getting things done" and has run national disaster programs before, the DHS spokesman told FOX News.

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. Environmentalists warned of a worst-case scenario in which a storm surge pushed spilled oil or chemicals from the bayous into the city of Houston itself, inundating mostly poor, Hispanic neighborhoods on its south side.

Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants that are "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."

In New Orleans, Rita's steady rains Thursday were the first measurable precipitation since Katrina. The forecast was for three to five inches in the coming days — dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into neighborhoods that have been dry for less than a week.

"Right now, it's a wait-and-see and hope-for-the-best," said Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which added sandbags to shore up levees and installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city's canals to protect against storm surges.

But as the rain fell, there were ominous signs it might not be enough. In the city's lower Ninth Ward, where water broke through a levee earlier this month and caused some of the worst flooding, there was standing water a foot deep in areas that were dry a day earlier.

Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 832 on Thursday, pushing the body count to at least 1,069 across the Gulf Coast. But workers under contract to the state to collect the bodies were taken off the streets of New Orleans because of the approaching storm.

In southwestern Louisiana, anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 residents along the state's southwest coast were urged to evacuate and state officials planned to send in buses to take refugees, some of whom had already fled Katrina.

"Rita has Louisiana in her sights," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. "Head north. You cannot go east, you cannot go west. If you know the local roads that go north, take those."

As for those who refuse to leave, she said: "Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms with indelible ink."

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. Blanco said she also asked for 15,000 more federal troops.

'Be Ready for the Worst'

Hundreds of buses were dispatched Wednesday to evacuate the poor and move out hospital and nursing home patients, and truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and rescue and medical teams were on standby in an effort to show the lessons learned in Katrina.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst," President Bush said in Washington.

"Now is not a time for warnings. Now is a time for action," said Mayor White in Houston.

He added: "There is no good place to put a shelter that could take a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane. I don't want anybody out there watching this and thinking that somebody is bound to open a local school for me on Friday, not with a hurricane packing these kinds of winds."

The U.S. mainland has never been hit by both a Category 4 and a Category 5 in the same season. Katrina at one point became a Category 5 storm, but weakened slightly to a Category 4 just before coming ashore.

In the Galveston-Houston-Corpus Christi area, about 1.3 million people were under orders to get out, in addition to 20,000 or more along with the Louisiana coast. Special attention was given to hospitals and nursing homes, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.

Galveston was already a virtual ghost town. The city's lone hospital was evacuated along with residents of a six-story retirement home.

The coastal city of 58,000 on an island 8 feet above sea level was nearly wiped off the map in 1900 when an unnamed hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000. It remains the nation's worst natural disaster.

City Manager Steve LeBlanc (search) said the storm surge could reach 50 feet. Galveston is protected by a seawall that is only 17 feet tall.

"Not a good picture for us," LeBlanc said.

In Houston, the state's largest city and home to the highest concentration of Katrina refugees, geography makes evacuation particularly tricky.

While many hurricane-prone cities are right on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland, so a coastal suburban area of 2 million people must evacuate through a metropolitan area of 4 million people where the freeways are often clogged under the best of circumstances.

Officials in Corpus Christi were loading up about 100 buses Thursday morning to evacuate people who have no other way to get out.

Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would destroy key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output.

Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.

Jennifer McDonald in Galveston planned to ride Rita out. She and her husband have enough food and water to last 10 days in their wooden house. If it gets really bad, the couple will take to the roof.

"If it goes, it goes," the 42-year-old nurse said of the house. "We're completely prepared."

FOX News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170105,00.html

[Leader]

Oil

Off-Shore Refineries Prepare

Thursday, September 22, 2005

GALVESTON, Texas — Hurricane Rita (search) gained power and headed toward a collision with the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries along the Texas coast, raising new fears about the nation's gasoline supply and prices at the pump.

Oil companies on Wednesday began closing refineries, including two of the largest around Houston, and several more seemed likely to be shuttered as early as Thursday.

Four Louisiana refineries are still out of operation from last month's Hurricane Katrina (search). Those plants accounted for agap that could strain the nation's supplies of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.

Texas has 26 refineries that account for more than one-fourth of the nation's refining capacity, mostly along 300 miles of Gulf Coast from the Louisiana border to Corpus Christi. That's right in the path that weather forecasters predict for Rita, which became a Category 5, 175-mph behemoth Wednesday and was expected to make landfall this weekend.

BP PLC began closing its massive Texas City refinery, and Marathon Oil Corp. (search) followed suit at its plant nearby. Shell Oil closed its Houston-area refinery, which kept running through the last major Texas hurricane, Alicia in 1983.

"It was a split decision between taking a risk and playing that waiting game of seeing where it's going to land, and being sensitive to employees getting home," said David McKinney (search), a Shell spokesman. "Once we made the decision, everybody felt good."

Exxon Mobil Corp (search). said Thursday morning it had begun shutting down its Baytown refinery -- nearly as big as the BP and Shell plants combined -- and another in Beaumont.

Valero Energy Corp. announced late Wednesday that it was shuttering refineries in Texas City and Houston and operating in Corpus Christi with a limited crew.

The region is also home to many chemical plants, and they too began shutting down. Dow Chemical Co. and Lyondell Chemical Co. closed some plants, although others remained operating late Wednesday.

Meanwhile in the Gulf of Mexico, Rita began to take a toll on oil production, which hadn't yet fully recovered from last month's Hurricane Katrina. Fresh evacuations that began this week in the eastern waters of the Gulf spread farther west, one step ahead of the storm.

Rita threatens to compound the havoc caused by Katrina, which damaged oil platforms and knocked out refineries, four of which in Louisiana remain dark. They had accounted for about 5 percent of U.S. refining capacity and weren't expected to resume operations anytime soon.

Combined, the damage from Katrina and the precautionary evacuations due to Rita have slashed normal Gulf oil production of 1.5 million barrels a day by 73 percent, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said Wednesday.

Since Katrina evacuations began Aug. 26, the storms have cut more than 27 million barrels of oil production, or 5 percent of the Gulf's annual production, the agency said. Natural gas production was 47 percent below normal on Wednesday.

Oil and gasoline prices could spike again if Rita causes additional disruptions in supply, market analysts say. Katrina caused gasoline prices at the pump to spike above $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.

Oil prices climbed more than $1 a barrel on Wednesday, as traders calculated the possibility that Rita could damage oil-industry facilities on land or in the Gulf of Mexico. Heating oil jumped nearly 3 cents to $2.0387 a gallon, while gasoline surged more than 7 cents to $2.0531 a gallon.

Analyst Tom Kloza of research firm Oil Price Information Service said many of the Houston refineries are well above sea level and have withstood past storms. He called the reaction hysteria -- unless Rita scores a direct hit on the Texas refineries.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_frien...170149,00.html

[Leader]

Compare and contrast: Buses

hmmm...

[Bluesman]

My sister lives in Houston...and she's staying.

She works for St. Luke's Hospital (not medical, though; admin), and when they asked for volunteers to stay, she said she would.

I am quite naturally worried; any decent brother would be. But she's in a very sturdy and well-sited building. They have excellent staff, have made security arrangements, and have secured vital supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel for their on-site generators (located well away from the water that drowned 'em out LAST time Houston flooded). They'll ride out whatever is coming up on the 5th floor.

Think good thoughts, my friends. My family has a personal stake in how this goes.

[THL]

My sister lives in Houston...and she's staying.

She works for St. Luke's Hospital (not medical, though; admin), and when they asked for volunteers to stay, she said she would.

I am quite naturally worried; any decent brother would be. But she's in a very sturdy and well-sited building. They have excellent staff, have made security arrangements, and have secured vital supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel for their on-site generators (located well away from the water that drowned 'em out LAST time Houston flooded). They'll ride out whatever is coming up on the 5th floor.

Think good thoughts, my friends. My family has a personal stake in how this goes.

Bluesman, my thoughts will be with your sister, please let us know after you hear from her.

My company evacuated all its "non-essential" Houston employees and all "non-essential" offshore rig employees, so we have some co-workers also riding it out down there.

[Asim Aquil]

My sister lives in Houston...and she's staying.

She works for St. Luke's Hospital (not medical, though; admin), and when they asked for volunteers to stay, she said she would.

I am quite naturally worried; any decent brother would be. But she's in a very sturdy and well-sited building. They have excellent staff, have made security arrangements, and have secured vital supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel for their on-site generators (located well away from the water that drowned 'em out LAST time Houston flooded). They'll ride out whatever is coming up on the 5th floor.

Think good thoughts, my friends. My family has a personal stake in how this goes.

Sounds like she's not going to be in some big danger, judging from all their preparation. Don't worry. My bro recently shifted from houston. He told me that his former neighbourhood's being evacuated.

Houston, I'm guessing can have bigger problems than NO. There's a lot more hardware for the hurricane to destroy. At least the people have evacuated.

[Leader]

Rita Weakens Over Gulf, Bringing Rains to New Orleans (Update1)

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Rita weakened over the Gulf of Mexico, its outer edge bringing rain to New Orleans and overwhelming levees damaged by Katrina a month ago.

Rita's winds slowed to 125 mph, a Category 3 on the Saffir- Simpson scale of intensity, as the storm veered to the north. The shift may spare the nation's refining industry near Houston a direct hit. Refining and production in the Gulf has been shut down, forcing prices higher less than a month after Katrina similarly disrupted supply.

Almost 3 million people have been ordered to leave their homes in Texas and Louisiana, creating gridlock on highways headed inland. Crews were bringing fuel to and rescuing stranded motorists. A bus carrying elderly evacuees burst into flames on a highway outside Dallas, killing 24 passengers.

``Obviously traffic was excruciatingly slow out there but the ultimate goal of getting millions and millions of people out of the way of this storm has been achieved,'' Texas Governor Rick Perry said during a press conference. ``The important thing is Texans took this storm and took the direction seriously.''

Rita was about 175 miles (282 kilometers) southeast of Port Arthur as of 1 p.m. local time, according to the National Hurricane Center. It is forecast to come ashore near Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, tomorrow morning as a Category 3 storm. Refineries on the waterways near eastern Texas and Louisiana account for about 7 percent of U.S. refining capacity.

New Orleans

All of the northeast Texas and western Louisiana coasts, including Galveston and Houston, will be affected by hurricane- force winds and rain, center meteorologist Mark McInerney said. Areas under a hurricane warning, from Port O'Connor, Texas, to Morgan City, Louisiana, are beginning to receive wind and rain, said center meteorologist Jennifer Pralgo.

New Orleans's 9th Ward filled with waist-deep water today and the west side of the city flooded when higher-than-normal tides from Rita poured over a levee that was patched following Katrina's devastation. A surge early today measured 7.8 feet above sea level at one point, Colonel Richard Wagenaar of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told reporters today.

Katrina's storm surge overwhelmed the system of levees and pumps, leading to breaches that flooded 80 percent of the city.

Repairs Delay

Water washed away gravel placed by the Army Corps of Engineers to reinforce the levee. As much as a foot of the reinforcement to that levee may be gone now, Wagenaar said. The flooding diminished as winds shifted this afternoon.

``Our understanding is that those areas were already evacuated,'' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters in Washington. ``There should not be any people there. And they've certainly been warned over and over again to get out. Because of the storm situation, the ability to fix the levees is going to have to wait a little bit. We certainly want to be sure that we don't put our own personnel at risk.''

There were reports of new flooding in the Louisiana parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines, which were among the hardest hit by Katrina, Wagenaar said on a conference call.

Katrina had winds of 140 mph and was a Category 4 storm when it came ashore last month, killing more than 1,000 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. Rita had winds as strong as 175 mph yesterday. Category 3 storms have winds of 111 to 130 mph, while Category 4 hurricanes have winds of 131 to 155 mph.

Between 2.5 million and 2.7 million Texans heeded warnings to evacuate, making the effort the largest ever, Perry said during a news conference in Austin. Thousands of vehicles, stuck in gridlock, ran out of fuel or stalled in temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) yesterday. The 240-mile drive from Houston to Dallas took more than 24 hours for some motorists.

Motorists Stranded

The Texas Transportation Department said it and local law enforcement assisted more than 5,000 stranded motorists along evacuation routes. State officials have made at least portions of Interstate 45 and U.S. 69 and U.S. 96 northbound only. Continental Airlines Inc. and other carriers halted flights to and from Houston today.

``Houston has weathered a lot of hurricanes, I don't know that they've ever evacuated people,'' said Victor ``Mike'' Flake, 62, of Bordentown, New Jersey. The Houston native's 90-year-old father, Adrian, was one of the nursing home residents killed in the bus fire.

Bad Side of the Storm

Four Louisiana parishes, with about 300,000 residents, were asked to move inland, said Louisiana National Guard Major Ed Bush. Rita's current path may put parishes to the east of the storm's center in the way of the strongest winds. Tornadoes are possible in southern parts of the state, the center said.

``That's the bad side to be on, so they're going to take the brunt of that wind,'' Ed Bush said in a telephone interview. ``They're all heading north because we've run out of places to run.''

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still addressing criticism of its response to Katrina, has 45 truckloads of water and ice and 25 truckloads of ready-to-eat meals pre-positioned, Chertoff said today. More than 400 medical personnel and 17 urban search-and-rescue teams are ready to assist as soon as needed, he said. He said Perry activated more than 5,000 Texas National Guard soldiers and airmen.

The hurricane may dump as much as 20 inches of rain in parts of southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. Storm-surge flooding of 15 feet to 20 feet above normal tide levels is possible near where Rita comes ashore.

Insured Losses

Officials in Galveston, where the storm was originally supposed to hit, expect winds as high as 75 to 90 mph during the storm. Tides are expected to reach a surge level of 7 feet above normal both on the Gulf and Galveston Bay sides of the island.

Rita may cost insurers including Allstate Corp. and St. Paul Travelers Cos. $9 billion to $18 billion, less than half their estimated expense for Katrina, said Eqecat Inc., which uses computers to gauge losses.

Refineries from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana, have shut on concern they will be hit by Rita. A total of at least 29 percent of U.S. fuel-making capacity is now off line, including the four plants that remain shut because of damage from Katrina.

``You still have a lot of refining capacity out of the market and it's going to be out of the market for some time, even without a hit on Houston,'' said Tom Bentz, an oil broker at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures Inc. in New York.

More than half of rigs and manned platforms in the Gulf, the base for 30 percent of U.S. oil production, were evacuated. About 99 percent of normal Gulf oil production and 72 percent of gas output was halted, the Minerals Management Service said.

Oil

Gasoline for October delivery fell 5.94 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $2.08 a gallon at the 2:30 p.m. close of trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices touched $2.92 a gallon on Aug. 31, the highest since trading began in 1984. Futures are 55 percent higher than a year ago. Gasoline is up 16.5 percent for the week.

Crude oil for November delivery fell $2.30, or 3.5 percent, to $64.20 a barrel on the Nymex. Futures have declined 9.4 percent since touching a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30, the day after Katrina made landfall. Prices are 32 percent higher than a year ago. The contract is up 1.9 percent for the week.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...QEL6U&refer=us

[Leader]

Hurricane Rita roars toward Texas; new flooding hits soggy New Orleans


Times staff and Associated Press

HOUSTON – Hurricane Rita weakened a bit today, roaring toward the Texas and Louisiana coast with 125 mph winds while rain on its fringes pushed water through a patched levee into the devastated and largely empty Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

"Our worst fears came true. The levee will breach if we keep on the path we are on right now, which will fill the area that was flooded earlier," said Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.

Near Dallas, as many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying elderly evacuees fleeing Rita caught fire.

"Rita is now a Category 3 hurricane ...," the National Hurricane Center said. "A further slow weakening is possible before landfall. But Rita is still expected to come ashore as a dangerous hurricane."

The storm was expected to come ashore early Saturday along the Texas-Louisiana coast on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston a direct hit. But Rita could plow straight into the Beaumont and Port Arthur area, a stretch of refineries and chemical plants about 75 miles east of Houston.

By morning, the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but traffic was still bumper-to-bumper from the outskirts of the city toward Austin and Dallas. The state escorted tanker trucks full of gas to empty stations in small towns along the way.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, the chief executive for the county surrounding Houston, told residents who had not left yet to stay where they were for the storm.

The bus fire took place in a traffic jam on Interstate 45 near Wilmer, southeast of Dallas. The vehicle was rocked by explosions and engulfed in flames that reduced it to a blackened, burned-out shell.

Early indications were that the bus caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said.

Nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, setting off an unprecedented exodus that brought traffic to a standstill across the Houston metropolitan area. Cars overheated and ran out of gas in 10- and 12-hour traffic jams. Some drivers gave up and turned around and went home.

Scores of petrochemical plants are situated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast in the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries, and damage and disruptions caused by Rita could cause already-rising oil and gasoline prices to go even higher. Also, environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill.

Plants shut down operations and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants about "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."

At 8 a.m. Pacific time, Rita was about 210 miles southeast of Port Arthur, moving northwest near 10 mph. Its winds had weakened to near 135 mph — down from 175 mph on Thursday. That meant Rita was on the border between a Category 3 and a Category 4 storm.

Its hurricane-force winds extended up to 85 miles from the center, and its tropical storm-force winds reached outward 205 miles, meaning Houston and Galveston might not feel Rita's full fury but could still get battered.

Two communities that stood to bear the brunt of the storm were Beaumont, which is a petrochemical, shipbuilding and port city of about 114,000; and Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 that is home to industries that include oil, shrimping and crawfishing.

The first bands of rain were expected before nightfall. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves and rain of up to 20 inches, with more than 25 inches possible over the next several days as the storm moves inland into Texas and Louisiana and wrings itself out.

Texas officials scrambled to reroute several inbound highways to accommodate outbound traffic, but many people were waiting so long they ran out of gas and were forced to park.

"We know you're out there," Houston Mayor Bill White said of the congestion that extended well into Louisiana. "We understand there's been fuel shortages."

Texas Army National Guard trucks were escorted by police to directly provide motorists with gasoline. The state was also working to get more than 200,000 gallons of gas to fuel-starved stations in the Houston area.

By late Thursday night, the traffic was at least moving slowly, but was still backed up for about 100 miles in what White called "one of the largest mass evacuations in American history."

Rita brought steady rain to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina. The forecast was for 3 to 5 inches in the coming days — dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into recently dry neighborhoods.

"Hurricane Rita is a very dangerous storm," said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. "We're not letting our guards down."

The Army Corps of Engineers added sandbags to shore up New Orleans' levees and installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city's canals to protect against storm surges.

About 5,000 soldiers and National Guard members remained in the city, along with about 1,400 police officers, Nagin said.

Oliver Lucius left New Orleans with his family after Katrina and was beginning to build a life in Corpus Christi. He and his wife had found jobs and their children were enrolled in local schools. Then came Rita.

"It was just settling in that I was there for the hurricane, and then I came here," said Ariel Lucius, 13, Oliver's daughter. "Now it seems like a dream."

The usually bustling tourist island of Galveston — rebuilt after as many as 12,000 people died in a 1900 hurricane — was all but abandoned, with at least 90 percent of its 58,000 residents cleared out.

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.

Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 832 on Thursday, pushing the body count to at least 1,069 across the Gulf Coast. But workers under contract to the state to collect the bodies were taken off the streets of New Orleans because of the approaching storm.

In southwestern Louisiana, up to 500,000 residents along the state's southwest coast were urged to evacuate and state officials planned to send in buses to take refugees.

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.

"Katrina. It's scared everyone," said Dianna Soileau, 29, who was fleeing the refinery town of Texas City with her husband and two children. "We don't want to be the same thing."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi...&date=20050923

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Looters Strike in Advance of Rita - Armed Citizens Patrol Midtown
Submitted by John Little on September 23, 2005 - 4:57pm.

Well I just found out why the media was in my parking garage. Looters struck last night and trashed 12 cars. We usually have very tight security but the gates were left open by management due to fears of power outages. I need to go check my car now.

Update:
My car is fine but the mood in the area is tense. I ran across two neighbors carrying hunting rifles who were actively searching for a guy they suspected of breaking into more cars. They agreed to let me photograph them from the neck down. Hopefully, HPD will send one or more officers to our neighborhood. I think there is risk of additional looting or worse.

Update II:
Quite a few HPD cars in the area now. It's going to be an interesting night.

http://www.blogsofwar.com/looters_st...dvance_of_rita

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Police: Looters arrested in The Heights

03:43 PM CDT on Friday, September 23, 2005

Associated Press

HOUSTON -- When Houston-area residents heeded warnings to flee Hurricane Rita, they left behind nearly abandoned neighborhoods and stores.

And a potential playground for thieves.

By Friday morning at least three people had been arrested on charges of looting. Houston school district police arrested three juveniles Thursday night who were accused of going room to room at Hamilton Middle School looking for electronics.

“They did this because they thought no one would be paying attention,” district spokesman Terry Abbott said. “We are amazed it was happening even before the storm.”

Houston Police Capt. Dwayne Ready said city police had not received reports of looting but were making extra patrols in areas around pawn shops, gun shops and stores such as Wal-Mart that might “be attractive to the criminal element.”

Ready said the department would pay greater-than-usual attention to pawn shops and gun shops after looters in New Orleans raided such stores, leaving roving bands of gunmen on the streets after Hurricane Katrina.

Ready said officers had responded to several burglary calls since the mass evacuations in the state’s largest city started earlier this week, but said they were routine calls and didn’t rise to the level of looting.

“I think the key element in looting is the fact that those who would not otherwise engage themselves in criminal activity (join in) and believe they will be able to hide in the crowd,” Ready said. “It’s the difference between an unlawful assembly and a riot. Essentially (looting) is theft but I think its when the crowd believes they can hide against the anonymity of a large crowd engaged in the same kind of conduct.”

And with the department at full alert Friday morning, Ready said officers would be very visible as long as weather conditions allow.

“We have put out the message that we are not going to tolerate looting and we have increased out presence and visibility,” Ready said.

Abbott said his officers were also planning to be very visible throughout the day.

To the south of the city, in South Houston and nearby Bellaire, police officials said they also had not received any reports of looting.

http://www.khou.com/topstories/stori....87dd0ff0.html

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Rita Preparation Update from the Texas Division of Emergency Management
Filed under:

* General

— site admin @ 12:00 pm

Here are some key points made this morning by the Texas Division of Emergency Management (DEM) in its morning conference to emergency managers in storm affected areas. I received the information via email. I stress that this is not an official statement. It does indicate what emergency management directors see as some of the more immediate challenges. For some thoughts on the snarled traffic, see this post on the Crawl-Away Scrape.

DEM’s key points as of this morning:

Texas Division of Emergency Management’s morning conference call: DEM has twice daily conference calls open to all emergency managers at times of heightened threat…

1. NWS [NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE] - Max winds decreased to strong Cat 3 or weak Cat 4.

East Texas in General - Flash flood watches to be issued later today. Storm may stall over East Texas resulting in much more rainfall - up to 25 or more inches possible over weekend.

Jefferson County - Coast to begin experiencing the effects of the hurricane in a few hours. There is a potential for strong tornadoes. 3- 6 pm for Tropical Force winds to strike coast.

Beaumont - 17 - 20 foot storm surge. Flood stage is 4 feet. 10 - 15 inches of rain. possible 25 inches in Lake Charles area.

Houston, Galveston Bay, Highway 59, and Liberty County - Hurricane effects beginning this evening. Rain and winds beginning around 8 - 10 pm in Harris county. Up to 10 hours of strong winds. Tree damage and power outages. 7-foot tide inbound and 7-foot tide going out of Galveston Bay.

Lufkin area tomorrow morning - Expect hurricane force winds. Rain increasing around 7 am. 6 - 10 inches of rain on Saturday.

2. Counties have many additional people in shelters. Counties need additional fuel, supplies, security and law enforcement for those who did not evacuate.

3. Airlift operations are no longer possible. Counties need to handle medical emergencies with other resources.

4. Law enforcement being taken off of traffic operations to begin security operations at the shelters and other locations. Some people who were unable to evacuate are beginning to exhibit stress-related problems and have been threatening each other.

5. SOC working on obtaining generators for cities to get lift stations and water plants operating following the passage of the hurricane.

6. Field hospital being set up in Houston now. Will need a second field hospital. Plan to set up in the Astrodome.

7. Highway 59 North will be closed soon. Reliant Center in Houston to be used for shelters following hurricane passing through the area.

8. Highways in Angelina County are moving. Main evacuation route, Highway 69, moving at 35 mph.

9. 1-877-LOVED1S (1-877-568-3317) so people can locate relatives in shelters.

10. [Subsequent] conference call will only focus on operational issues. No weather report.

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=602

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New Orleans floods again as Rita strikes

JACQUI GODDARD
IN HOUSTON

FLOODWATER poured into New Orleans again last night as heavy rain caused breaches in the city's already fragile levees - giving the first indications that Hurricane Rita and its 125mph winds would fulfil the worst fears of disaster agencies across the southern United States.

As the first waves hit the Louisiana coastline, water began cascading through levees which had been patched up by authorities in recent days following the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.

"Our worst fears came true," said Major Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard. "We have three significant breaches and the water is rising rapidly."

Although Hurricane Rita weakened as it approached landfall - reduced to a "Category 3" storm by officials - witnesses reported water "as far as the eye can see" in neighbourhoods from which the flood caused by Katrina last month had only just been drained.

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans were under water. Maj Guidry said water near the breached harbour canal was rising at the rate of about three inches a minute.

Further west, in Texas, officials warned of a catastrophe as the unprecedented evacuation of the whole region continued to cause traffic gridlock.

Hurricane Rita is expected to make landfall this morning at Port Arthur, Texas, near the Louisiana border. Officials said they expected it to destroy almost 5,700 homes and affect more than five million Texans.

While cities such as Houston could escape the worst, already-flooded areas of western Louisiana could face their second destructive storm.

Among the areas worst-hit is likely to be Galveston, Texas - scene of the deadliest storm in US history, which killed up to 12,000 people in 1900.

President George Bush had expected to travel from Washington to Texas, his home state, as the storm closed in, but his plans were cancelled at the last minute. The White House said he did not want to slow down the storm preparations.

Mr Bush said: "Our job is to care for and assist the people, to save lives and to help these people get back on their feet."

Last night, six navy ships and 26 helicopters were on standby to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with damage assessment, search and rescue, and medical evacuation missions. Military communications teams were poised to assist the relief effort with satellite telephones and radios.

David Paulison, FEMA acting head, said 400 medical personnel were on standby in Texas with lorry-loads of food, water and ice. At least 17 search and rescue teams are on the ground, along with 50,000 regular and national guard troops.

Major-General Richard Rowe, with emergency planners at the US Northern Command, said: "We're leaning as far forward as we can to be ready to support FEMA in the state's efforts to preserve life, to support people with immediate care, water, rations and deliveries."

But not everything was running smoothly yesterday. Petrol stations along major evacuation routes in southern Texas ran dry. The Texas National Guard transported 200,000 gallons of fuel to garages to get people back on their way.

Houston's police chief, Harold Hunt, said of the petrol shortage: "We're kind of making this up as we go. We've never had anything like this."

Bill White, the mayor of Houston, admitted that the heavy demand for fuel had not been well catered for and that more tankers should have been placed on standby ahead of the storm.

He added, however, that he had not ordered the entire city to flee - just those in areas that may be prone to flooding.

Rick Perry, the Texas governor, promised that no-one would be left stranded.

"Traffic was excruciatingly slow at times out there, but the ultimate goal of getting millions of people out of the way of the storm has been achieved," he said.

"We are going to get through this because so many of our residents took this evacuation seriously and because our state has thousands of rescue workers and relief workers on standby.

"Be calm, be strong, say a prayer for Texas."

However, many people who joined the traffic jams gave up in exasperation and turned back home. At the Richmond Arms British pub in Houston, Scottish expats sipped their beer calmly and watched footage of those attempting to get out of the city.

The pub continued serving bangers and mash, Cornish pasties and scotch eggs as other business owners nearby boarded up and moved out.

"We'll be staying at home," said Malcolm Douglas, an oil worker who has lived in Houston for seven years after moving from Selkirk with his wife, Elspeth. "We couldn't find any petrol and we haven't got anywhere to evacuate to anyway. What's the point in using up all your petrol to get a few miles and then turn back?

"Unless Tony Blair wants to send in a frigate to come and rescue us, we're staying put," Mr Douglas said.

"A neighbour was evacuating and said we could use his garage, so we loaded all our patio and garden furniture into mine and put my car into his. Now he has called to say he's coming back and he needs his garage back.

"They set out early with their two kids, got caught in the traffic, spent eight and a half hours not getting very far and decided to head home again."

Vikki Jeffrey and Steven Aitken, from Aberdeen, have given up the chance to escape the storm because they could not face leaving their three golden retrievers - Cole, Cropper and Candi - to face the storm on their own.

Ms Jeffrey said: "We'd never dream of leaving the dogs alone. They're our babies, and everyone who knows us knows that. But it is scary, just waiting here for it. This is the first hurricane we've seen, and we just don't know what to expect."

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1986402005

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Houston, Galveston warn looters

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 24, 2005

Police in Houston and Galveston have beefed up patrols and lengthened shifts to prevent looting in areas evacuated for Hurricane Rita, saying they won't have a repeat of the large-scale lawlessness that plagued New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath.

"We'll be ready to respond to any outbreak of lawlessness. We are in a high state of alert in all neighborhoods," said Sgt. Nathan McDuell, a spokesman for the Houston Police Department.

The Houston department has 4,700 officers working 12-hour shifts in what Sgt. McDuell referred to as a rare "full mobilization." They are sleeping at stations and are not allowed to go home.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago, New Orleans spiraled out of control with looting, gunfights and reports of rapes. Nearly a third of the city's police force disappeared and has not been seen since.

Looting and shootings -- with stolen firearms -- were rampant in New Orleans. But many suspected criminals were issued citations and then set free, because, for a time, there was no place to put them.

Sgt. McDuell pointed out that on Wednesday, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt issued a "stern warning that looting will not be tolerated and that violators will be prosecuted to the highest extent allowed by law."

He said looters could be subject to felony charges and anywhere from five to 99 years in jail if convicted.

"Bad guys in Houston know that this is one town that does not tolerate crime," Sgt. McDuell said.

Asked whether police will be allowed to shoot to kill looters, the sergeant said, "There is not martial law yet. But the Houston community has been in a high state of readiness since Katrina." That Category 4 hurricane struck the Gulf Coast Aug. 29 and caused massive flooding.

As Hurricane Rita bore down on Texas, some Houstonians evacuated, but the majority "probably remained here," Sgt. McDuell said.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office, which has at least 2,500 sworn officers and often collaborates with Houston police, is also geared up, said Lt. John Martin, a sheriff's office spokesman.

For this emergency, he said, most officers, including plainclothes detectives and sheriff's deputies, are in uniforms patrolling the streets, and "most are working 12-hour shifts."

And while Harris County officers usually patrol solo, they are part of two-member teams for Hurricane Rita, he said.

Given that most of the Houston area was not subject to a mandatory evacuation, "the majority" of residents "probably remained," Sgt. McDuell said.

But a mandatory evacuation was ordered for Galveston. "Pretty much nobody is still here," except for police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, who are all in working 12-hour shifts, according to Lt. Henry Porretto of the Galveston Police Department.

"There's always the possibility of looting, but it's very minimal. We have a proactive plan in place," the lieutenant said late yesterday.

He added: "We have anti-looting SWAT teams working in every quadrant, looking for looters, burglars and other perpetrators. These are specialty teams whose mission is to look for crime. They haven't encountered anything yet."

Lt. Porretto declined to say how many with these special details are scouring the empty island city. "But it's a really large number. We prepared for the worst, and I'm confident in the troops we have."

If it turns out that storm-related violence is minor in Galveston, Lt. Porretto said it will be the result both of good planning and the fact that residents "responded to the mandatory evacuation order in a timely manner."

http://insider.washingtontimes.com/a...3-115143-4703r