Rita slams Texas, Louisiana coast

Rita slams Texas, Louisiana coast

Patrick Moser, Agence France-Presse/Beaumont, Texas

Hurricane Rita hammered Texas and Louisiana early Saturday, unleashing a terrifying tempest of 195 kilometer (125 miles) per hour winds and drenching low lying areas threatened by flood tides with driving sheets of rain.

Category Three Rita smashed into a coastline bristling with vital oil and chemical installations after its outer bands dumped fresh floods on New Orleans, and an estimated two million people fled its approaching wrath.

Street signs, roofing, tree limbs and other debris careened through the air, in deluged and deserted streets littered with downed power lines and torn down traffic lights and fires fanned by fast moving winds blazed in Galveston and Houston.

In Beaumont, Texas, just northwest of the spot where Rita crashed ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, flashes of green light erupted in the night sky as electricity substations short- circuited, plunging whole towns into darkness as the storm wailed.

Walls of water surged through the streets of Lake Charles, 55 miles (88 kilometers) to the east, across the state line in Louisiana, as buildings sustained heavy damage, television reports said.

In the city of Natchitoches, in central Louisiana, 160 miles (257 kilometres) north of the coast, five inches of rain had already fallen, residents reported damage to the roofs of their homes and power lines down.

Tragedy struck earlier Friday, when 24 elderly patients of a nursing home burned to death in a bus explosion during the mass, confusing exodus away from the coast, less than four weeks after deadly Hurricane Katrina pummelled Louisiana, Alamaba and Mississipi, killing at least 1,075 people.

Forecasters warned fearsome flood tides of up to 15 feet high (4.5 metres) could swallow up parts of the Gulf Coast, and there were signs that the storm could stall, as it settled on land, and pile up deep rainfall totals.

"We have landfall," Colin McAdie, a spokesman for the U.S. National Hurricane center, in Miami, told AFP, adding that the storm roared ashore on the Texas/Louisiana border at 3:39 am (0739 GMT).

The center's latest advisory at 0700 GMT said Rita was packing maximum winds of 120 miles (195 kilometers) per hour with higher gusts and that the calm eye of the storm was 10 miles (16 kilometers) off the coast.

"Large swells generated by Rita will likely affect most portions of the Gulf Coast," the advisory said.

Isolated tornados were possible throughout eastern Texas, Louisiana, Southern Arkansas and Mississippi throughout Saturday, the advisory said.

Maximum rainfall totals in excess of 25 inches (63 centimetres) could be seen in some areas, raising the prospect of severe flash flooding.

In Galveston, Texas, where a 1900 hurricane killed up to 12,000 people, a fierce fire raged in a historic district, television pictures showed. Walls of flame and sparks fanned by winds of up to 70 miles per hour (112 kilometres) surged towards firefighters.

There were also reports that an apartment block was ablaze in Houston.

Coastguards in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, meanwhile claimed the first rescue of the storm, plucking an eight month pregnant woman and her four year old son to safety by helicopter from their damaged home.

National Guard troops and police stood ready to fan out to search for casualties as soon as the winds stilled.

In New Orleans, levees were breached on the Industrial Canal and the water was eight feet (2.4 meters) high in some areas, including the impoverished Ninth Ward and St Bernard's parish -- two of the areas worst hit by Katrina.

There was no flooding, however, in the north of the city where the 17th Street Canal and London Outfall Canal off Lake Pontchartrain breached by Katrina on August 29, said Louisiana transportation and development secretary Johnny Bradberry.

Massive traffic jams had snaked out of major population centers, including the city of Houston, Texas, on late Wednesday and Thursday, as people, many with Katrina's deadly strike in their minds, fled to safety.

Rita's first tragic toll came as a bus carrying elderly nursing home residents away from the storm zone caught fire near Dallas, killing 24 people, police said.

More than 40 people were on the bus when it was rocked by explosions that police said they believe were caused by oxygen canisters for the patients. On Thursday an elderly woman caught in a traffic jam in the exodus died of apparent heat exhaustion.

Port Arthur, just south of Beaumont, is a major oil refinery and chemical processing region. The U.S. military on Friday airlifted more than 10,000 people out of the city amid fears that it would bear the brunt of Rita's force.

President George W. Bush, yet to shake off criticism of his leadership during the Katrina crisis, cancelled a planned visit to Texas to avoid getting in the way of emergency workers.