Rita rages, Texas trembles

Swelling into a ferocious Category 5 storm, it forces an exodus from the battered Gulf Coast

BY TINA SUSMAN | STAFF WRITER; This story was supplemented with wire service reports.

September 22, 2005

More than a million people were ordered to evacuate the Gulf Coast yesterday after Hurricane Rita burgeoned into a Category 5 storm, with 165-mph winds, and churned toward Texas in a scenario hauntingly similar to Katrina's.

After brushing the Florida Keys as a Category 2 hurricane Tuesday, Rita's strength soared as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday, forecasters upgraded it to the most dangerous category, with landfall expected Saturday morning between Corpus Christi and Galveston.

In September 1900, Galveston, which sits on a barrier island 8 feet above sea level, was struck by the nation's deadliest disaster: a hurricane that killed at least 6,000 people. That prompted the building of a 17-foot-high seawall to protect the city. With the Gulf Coast still struggling in the aftermath of last month's Hurricane Katrina, however, officials were taking no chances.

The city's 58,000 residents, in addition to people in low-lying areas of Houston and Corpus Christi, were ordered out. So were about 20,000 people along the Louisiana coast, including New Orleans residents who had been told Monday that they could return home. More than 80 percent of their city was flooded after Hurricane Katrina made landfall Aug. 29 and caused breaks in levees protecting New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain.

Like Rita, Katrina had caused relatively little damage in Florida before gaining strength in the Gulf and turning into a Category 5 storm. It diminished before making landfall but was still powerful enough to kill at least 1,036 people, 799 of them in Louisiana.

"It's not going to be fun. It's a big storm," the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Paulison, said of Rita as he announced a slew of measures already in place - a sharp contrast to the after-the-fact scrambling that marred FEMA's response to Katrina.

Among other things, Paulison said six military helicopters were on standby to conduct search-and-rescue missions; 400 medical personnel were on call; and truckloads of water, ice and food were ready to roll into the region. Hospitals and nursing homes began evacuating patients to avoid a scenario like that in New Orleans, where scores of elderly and ill people died because they were not evacuated.

"I have had several say, 'I don't want to go,' and I said, 'I'm sorry, you're going,'" said David Hastings, executive director of Galveston's Edgewater Retirement Community, home to about 200 elderly people.

President George W. Bush, accused of ignoring the Katrina catastrophe for days, pledged to be "ready for the worst" and declared a state of emergency in Texas and Louisiana, where workers continued the search for bodies in New Orleans.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said a 70-year-old man had been found alive in his home Tuesday, along with the body of his wife, who had died five days earlier. Though Nagin had ordered an evacuation of the city before Katrina hit, thousands who were too poor or too feeble to flee, who lacked transportation or who were reluctant to leave behind pets never got out. Many died awaiting help.

This time, evacuees were allowed to take pets with them, and Nagin said buses were waiting at the city's Convention Center to ferry people out of Rita's way. Buses were also carrying people out of Galveston.

"It's scary. It's really scary," Shalonda Dunn said as she and her 5- and 9-year-old daughters waited in Galveston to board one. "I'm glad we've got the opportunity to leave. ... You never know what can happen."

For many, Rita brought an unpleasant sense of deja vu.

Alicia Baxter and her family, who used to live in New Orleans, had sought shelter from Katrina in the city's Superdome. When that shelter became unbearably overcrowded, they were evacuated to Houston's Astrodome. From there, they went to Galveston to settle, at least temporarily.

"I'm about to go kill myself," Baxter said as the family packed up to move again. "This is unbelievable."

In New Orleans, which could be devastated again if Rita switched directions, the Army Corps of Engineers scrambled to fortify the patched levees.

Forecasters said Rita, the 17th storm of a hurricane season that lasts through Nov. 30, could be the most intense hurricane to hit Texas and one of the most powerful to strike the United States. The last Category 5 hurricane was Andrew in 1992, which killed 43 people in Florida.