US cities empty as Hurricane Rita looms
 

GALVESTON, Texas, Friday (AFP)

A mass exodus from the deadly threat of Hurricane Rita left a virtual ghost coast through Texas and Louisiana amid frantic last-minute preparations for the second super-storm in a month.

With the storm expected to hit the Gulf Coast late Friday, more than one million people piled into cars and buses with whatever possessions they could carry, creating huge traffic jams on all roads heading inland.

The port city of Galveston, scene of the worst US natural disaster when a similar storm hit 105 years ago, was virtually empty. Only the most hardy survivors from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on August 29 stayed in New Orleans.

Residents also fled most other cities and towns on a 500 kilometer (310 mile) stretch of coast from Port O’Connor in Texas to Morgan City in Louisiana, which is under a formal hurricane warning.

Rita lost some power during Thursday as it tore through the oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico, but remained an “extremely dangerous” storm packing winds of about 145 miles (240 kilometers) per hour, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

The first strong rains from Rita fell on New Orleans late Thursday and Mayor Ray Nagin expressed fears of more of the flooding that caused its Katrina catastrophe.

The center said Rita was a category four storm on the five level Saffir-Simpson scale.

Katrina was also a category four when it hit Louisiana and Mississippi. The toll from Katrina rose to 1,066 Thursday with many more bodies expected to be found. US authorities kept up an intense campaign to get residents away from the coastal zone this time — while the governors of Texas and Louisiana asked for 40,000 federal troops to be sent to help with any relief operation.

“This is a big dangerous storm, it is a massive storm, it covers half of the Gulf of Mexico,” said David Paulison, acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“I don’t think anyone on the Gulf Coast is out of harm’s way.” Tens of thousands of people jammed roads out of Galveston, where between 8,000 and 12,000 people were killed by the 1900 storm. Computer projections this time suggested the whole city could be swallowed up by a flood tide.

Most of Galveston’s 60,000 residents decided to outrun Rita, as ambulances with sirens blaring rushed patients from hospitals, and school buses ferried people out.

Galveston city manager Steven Leblanc estimated that 90 percent of the inhabitants have left the city, which is built on a low-lying barrier island. “It feels like a ghost town to me, and that’s a good thing,” he said.