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Thousands Evacuate As Rita Strengthens

Rita Now Category 5 Storm With Sustained Winds OF 165 MPH

POSTED: Wednesday, September 21, 2005

UPDATED: 7:49 pm CDT September 21, 2005

GALVESTON, Texas -- Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 165-mph monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.

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With Rita projected to hit Texas by Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating. And New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.

Galveston, Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County, low-lying parts of Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The storm went from a 115-mph Category 2 to a 165-mph Category 5 in a matter of hours Wednesday.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland. Category 5 is the highest on the scale, and only three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland -- most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

Government officials eager to show they had learned their lessons from the sluggish response to Katrina sent in hundreds of buses to evacuate the poor, moved out hospital and nursing home patients, dispatched truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and put rescue and medical teams on standby. An Army general in Texas was told to be ready to assume control of a military task force in Rita's wake.

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

Dozens of people lined up with pillows, bags and coolers to board one of several yellow Galveston school district buses. The buses were part of a mandatory evacuation ordered by officials in Galveston County, which has a population of nearly 267,000.

About 80 buses left Galveston for shelters 100 miles north in Huntsville. The island city's mayor ordered mandatory evacuations to begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

"If you are staying, your services are going to be disrupted and when the storm waters, tides get high enough and we cannot get to you, we cannot rescue you. So please make plans to evacuate," said Galveston City Attorney Susie Green.

Nursing home and assisted-care facilities began evacuating their residents at 6 a.m.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is the city's only hospital. It discharged about 200 people Tuesday who were healthy enough to go home and are airlifting others inland by helicopter, ambulance and buses.

Spokeswoman Jennifer Reynolds-Sanchez said the hospital would shut down and not take any patients when the storm hits.

By late afternoon, Rita was centered more than 700 miles southeast of Corpus Christi. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi.

But with its breathtaking size -- tropical storm-force winds extending 350 miles across -- practically the entire western end of the U.S. Gulf Coast was in peril, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.

Municipalities Call For Mandatory, Voluntary Evacuations

The following counties and cities in southeast Texas have called for voluntary and mandatory evacuations.

Mandatory Evacuations:

Voluntary Evacuations:

A new state law passed this year allows city and county officials to order a mandatory evacuation if needed; however, many authorities say they would not forcibly remove anyone from their homes.

When Should You Evacuate?

Galveston is trying to keep the evacuation moving in an orderly fashion.

Zone A residents, denoted in blue, will begin evacuating at 6 p.m. Wednesday. This region includes all of Galveston Island, and the cities of Jamaica Beach, Tiki Island, Bayou Vista, Clear Lake Shores, Kemah, San Leon, Bacliff, Bayview and the Bolivar Peninsula.

Residents who live near cities in Zone A should also begin evacuating Wednesday night.

Zone B, denoted in yellow, is for residents living in cities further inland, such as Texas City, La Marque, Hitchcock and Dickinson. The mandatory evacuation for Zone B residents begins Thursday at 2 a.m.

Zone C, denoted in purple, includes League City, Friendswood and Santa Fe. The mandatory evacuation for residents in this group starts at noon Thursday.

Authorities Hope Texans Learned From Katrina

Authorities said they wanted to make sure Texans learned from watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi on Aug. 29. Hundreds of thousands of people stayed through the storm, leaving many for days without food or water.

"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. There was great loss of life and property and misery," said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "We just don't want that to happen here. 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."

Aware of this history, Thomas said Galveston County officials used a law passed this year to order a mandatory evacuation of its coastal communities. But authorities said they would not forcibly remove anyone from their homes.

This month marks the 105th anniversary of the hurricane that wiped out Galveston in one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history. An estimated 8,000 people were killed.

The last major hurricane to strike Texas was Alicia in 1983, which flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead. Damages totaled more than $2 billion from the Category 3 storm.

The Houston area's geography makes evacuation particularly tricky. Unlike other hurricane-prone cities where the big city is on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland. So a coastal suburban area of 2 million people has to evacuate through a metropolitan area of nearly 4 million.

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.

Hurricane Information:

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National Hurricane Center

City Of Galveston

Galveston County Emergency Management

Harris County Emergency Management

National Weather Service, Houston and Galveston Information

Evacuation Maps

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School Closings

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