Date Posted: Thursday, September 22, 2005

Hurricane Rita strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it made its way to expected landfall in Texas on Saturday.

HOUSTON, Texas, Sep 21 (MASNET & News Agencies) - Hurricane Rita gathered power as it roared across the Gulf of Mexico oil-producing zone, forcing the United States to brace for its second mega-storm in less than four weeks.

Rita, packing winds of 165 miles per hour, was upgraded to a Category 5 storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale as it bore down on Texas where inhabitants of Galveston, Houston and other vulnerable areas were ordered to evacuate, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Thousands of exhausted refugees who moved from New Orleans to Texas after the deadly Hurricane Katrina on August 29 also faced a new evacuation out of the path of the new storm, which brushed the Florida Keys islands on Tuesday.

The storm, however, did not get close enough to reach the vulnerable chain of islands with its most destructive forces, reports Reuters news agency.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said Rita would hit land in Texas this weekend, but added there was a possibility that it could make landfall in Louisiana, west of stricken New Orleans.

"The conditions over the central Gulf are much like they were for Katrina," Hurricane Center Deputy Director Ed Rappaport told CNN.

A major hurricane could send a 20-foot storm surge over the Texas coast by Saturday, reports Reuters.

Galveston, a city of 57,000 on a Gulf Coast barrier island, issued a mandatory evacuation order on Wednesday morning. In 1900, a hurricane hit the city killing between 8,000 and 12,000 people in the deadliest storm in U.S. history.

About 80 buses were set to leave Galveston beginning at midmorning, bound for shelters 100 miles north in Huntsville. The buses were part of a mandatory evacuation ordered for all of Galveston County, population 267,000, reports the Associated Press (AP).

U.S. authorities are taking no chances this time after weathering criticism over its flawed response to Katrina, for which the confirmed death toll is now nearly 1,000.

"This is a big storm and it's going to have an impact along the entire coast," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Fox News during a round of morning television appearances, reports Reuters.

"You can't play around with this storm," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." He added: "The lesson is that when the storm hits, the best place to be is to be out of the path of the storm."

Chertoff said authorities had positioned supplies, begun making preparations for the early evacuation of people in nursing homes and hospitals and were checking on communications systems. He said the federal government had sent a Coast Guard admiral to Texas to coordinate the response, reports Reuters.

"I hope that by doing what the state officials and mayors are doing now, are getting people who are invalids out of the way, encouraging people to leave early, that when the storm hits, there will be property damage, but hopefully there won't be a lot of people to rescue," Chertoff told MSNBC.

"It's time to leave now, right now, and stay gone until we say it's OK to come back," said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, after a city council meeting late Tuesday to declare a state of emergency.

Katrina forced Alicia Baxter and her family into the Superdome stadium in New Orleans, then the Astrodome in Houston and they had arrived in Galveston last week. "I'm about to go kill myself," she said as relatives packed up behind her. "This is unbelievable."

Several thousand people in emergency shelters in Houston were also told to leave again. Houston Mayor Bill White also told residents in areas prone to storm surges or major floods to prepare to leave.

"Hurricane Rita on its present course poses a risk to Houston and the whole Houston region," White said, as he urged people with their own transportation to use it because there were not enough government vehicles to get everyone out of vulnerable Houston areas, reports Reuters.

Louisiana, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina's August 29 hit, declared a state of emergency as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suspended the return of the city's residents because of the threat from Rita.

Nagin said two busloads of people had been evacuated already and 500 other buses were ready to roll, reports Reuters.

"We're a lot smarter this time around," he said. "We've learned a lot of hard lessons."

At 11:00 a.m. EDT, Rita was about 790 miles southeast of Corpus Christi in Texas. The hurricane was headed west into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico at about 13 mph, the Hurricane Center said.

Forecasters predicted it would come ashore Saturday somewhere between northern Mexico and western Louisiana, most likely in Texas, reports the AP.

Shell and BP oil companies ordered the evacuation of their platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and crude oil prices made strong gains because of the new threat from Rita.

Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output, reports the AP.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, climbed $1.10 to $67.30 per barrel. In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for November delivery gained $0.96 to $65.16.

In Cuba, some 230,000 people were evacuated in the central and western part of the island, including from the capital Havana and the tourist resort of Varadero, when Rita blasted by on Tuesday. Cuban Civil Defense officials said they set up 600 shelters in Havana.

In southern Florida, the hurricane left more than 24,000 homes without power, sent street signs and coconuts flying, and flooded parts of the only road that links the Florida Keys to the mainland.

There were no reports of casualties from either Cuba or Florida however.

Officials ordered the 80,000 residents of the Florida Keys to leave, but many opted to ride out the hurricane.

Florida's Governor Jeb Bush urged residents to remain indoors because of continuing winds and possible flooding.

"There is as much danger after the storm than during the storm," he said at a news conference.

Florida Keys hospitals were closed, while schools, government buildings and many businesses shut down in parts of south Florida.

Miami International Airport remained open, but many flights were either canceled or delayed.

While U.S. authorities had come under fire for failing to respond to the New Orleans disaster immediately, Jeb Bush stressed that military helicopters, National Guard soldiers, search-and-rescue teams, medical personnel and trucks loaded with emergency supplies were ready to move into any affected area of Florida.