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2 million Americans flee Hurricane Rita
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-23 13:51

Hurricane Rita closed in on the Texas Gulf Coast and the heart of the U.S. oil-refining industry with howling 140 mph winds Thursday, but a sharper-than-expected turn to the right set it on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit.

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]

The storm's march toward land sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the nation's fourth-largest city in a frustratingly slow, bumper-to-bumper exodus.

"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.

The storm's course change could send it away from Houston and Galveston and instead draw the hurricane 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 chemical plants and petroleum 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.

Late Thursday, the storm shifted slightly to the west, toward Texas, but the National Hurricane Center still predicted it would make landfall somewhere along a 350-mile stretch of the Texas and Louisiana coastline.

Meteorologist Chris Sisko said hurricane specialists were carefully monitoring the hurricane's "wobble" to determine whether it could indicate a change in direction.

At 11 p.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 350 miles southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 10 mph. Its winds were 140 mph, down from 175 mph earlier in the day.

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