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Rita unleashes Category 5 fury over U.S. Gulf
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-22 07:17
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, AP reported.
"It's scary. It's really scary," Shalonda Dunn said as she and her 5- and
9-year-old daughters waited to board a bus arranged by emergency authorities in
Galveston. "I'm glad we've got the opportunity to leave. ... You never know what
can happen."
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, low-lying parts of Corpus Christi and 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. Between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m., it went
from a 115-mph Category 2 to a 165-mph Category 5.
Joe McGee stands in the pounding surf at the
Southern Most Point in Key West, Fla. Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, as
Hurricane Rita neared the lower Florida Keys.
[AP] | 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.
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