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.