Texans fleeing Rita stalled by traffic (AP) Updated: 2005-09-23 07:00
HOUSTON - Hurricane Rita closed in on the nation's fourth-largest city and
the heart of the U.S. oil-refining industry with howling 145 mph winds Thursday,
sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in a frustratingly slow,
bumper-to-bumper exodus. AP reported.
Cherlyn, left, and
Lane McWhorter of Baycliff, TX ride in the back of a pickup truck with
their animals in Houston, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2005.
[AP] | "This is the worst planning I've ever
seen," said Judie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting
out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. "They say we've learned a
lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn't prove it by me."
In all, nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were
urged to get out of the way of Rita, a 400-mile-wide storm that weakened
Thursday from a top-of-the-scale Category 5 hurricane to a Category 4 as it
swirled across the Gulf of Mexico.
It also made a sharper-than-expected turn to the right late in the afternoon,
on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit and send
it instead toward Port Arthur, Texas, or Lake Charles, La., at least 60 miles up
the coast, by late Friday or early Saturday.
But it was still an extremely dangerous storm — and one aimed at a section of
coastline with the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries.
Environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill from the 87
industrial plants and storage installations that represent more than one-fourth
of U.S. refining capacity.
Rita also brought rain to already-battered New Orleans, raising fears that
the city's Katrina-damaged levees would fail and flood the city all over again.
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