Tens of thousands of people along the United States Gulf Coast grabbed their most prized possessions, boarded up their homes and fled on Wednesday in the face of the onslaught from Hurricane Rita, a category-five storm that could rival Hurricane Katrina in intensity when it makes landfall this weekend.
Mandatory evacuations were under way in Galveston, Texas, and New Orleans, although the storm appeared to be veering away from the flood-hit Louisiana city. Houston’s mayor also called for a voluntary evacuation of low-lying areas that could be affected by storm surges.
Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys as a category-two storm on Tuesday, causing relatively minor damage, but picked up power from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico as it tracked to the west. The eye of the hurricane was expected to move through the south-eastern Gulf overnight, and is predicted to make landfall near Galveston on Saturday morning. Its projected path passes over the largest concentration of oil refineries on the Gulf Coast, leading to the price of oil rising by more than $1 a barrel on Wednesday.
Galveston, built on a low-lying island off the Texas coast, was the scene of the US’s worst natural disaster in 1900 when an estimated 8 000 people died after a hurricane submerged much of the city. Since then, a large sea wall has been built and much of the city has been raised using dredged sand from Galveston Bay.
But, after Katrina, nobody was taking any chances.
”Destination unknown,” Catherine Womack (71), who was boarding up the windows of her brick bungalow in Galveston, told The Associated Press. ”I’ve never left before. I think because of Katrina, there is a lot of anxiety and concern. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
About 80 buses were due to leave the city for shelters 160km north in Huntsville, part of a mandatory evacuation ordered by officials in Galveston county, where 267 000 people live.
”The real lesson [from Katrina] that I think the citizens learned is that the people in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi did not leave in time,” said Galveston mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. ”We’ve always asked people to leave earlier, but because of Katrina they are now listening to us and they’re leaving as we say.”
David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said aircraft and buses were available to evacuate residents. Rescue teams and truckloads of ice, water and prepared meals were also being sent to Texas.
Stung by criticism of the slow response to Katrina, President George Bush spoke to Texas Governor Rick Perry about planning for the storm.
”Up and down the coastline, people are now preparing for what is anticipated to be another significant storm,” Bush said. ”We hope and pray Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we must be ready for the worst.”
Although Rita had been expected to remain a category-four storm until it reached land, the National Hurricane Centre on Wednesday night upgraded it to a top-of-the-scale category-five storm, with sustained winds of 265kph.
Houston was also evacuating 1 100 Katrina evacuees still in the two mass shelters to an Arkansas army base.
If forecasts are correct, New Orleans can rest easy. A high-pressure system should prevent Rita turning north until it is west of the Louisiana coast, sparing the city a second lashing in a month. But the precarious state of New Orleans levees led mayor Ray Nagin to order a mandatory evacuation. The Army Corps of Engineers said the levees can only handle up to 15cm of rain and a storm surge of about 3m.
”The protection is very tenuous at best,” said Dave Wurtzel, a corps official.
Academics at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Centre have rejected official explanations for the levees’ collapse, saying the storm surges were smaller than suggested and flood protection should have kept the city dry.
The death toll from Hurricane Katrina climbed to 1 037 after Louisiana on Wednesday raised the number of its fatalities to 799. There were 219 dead in Mississippi, with 19 deaths elsewhere. — Guardian Unlimited Â