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'Ghost coast' awaits Rita's wrath
23/09/2005 23:37 - (SA)
Houston - Hurricane Rita lost power on Friday, but stayed on course for a major hit on the southern United States as 24 people died fleeing Texas and new floods hit stricken New Orleans.
A 500km stretch from Port O'Connor in Texas to New Orleans in Louisiana became a virtual ghost coast as an estimated two million people headed inland to escape the second major storm in less than four weeks.
Rita weakened slightly, but was still packing winds of 200km/h and was expected to be a dangerous hurricane when it made landfall early on Saturday, said the US national hurricane centre.
One bus taking elderly nursing home residents away from the storm zone caught fire on Friday near Dallas, killing 24 people, said police.
Died of apparent heat exhaustion
More than 40 people were on the bus when it was rocked by a series of explosions before dawn that police believe were caused by oxygen canisters for the patients.
The storm claimed its first victim on Thursday when an elderly woman died of apparent heat exhaustion while stuck in a huge traffic jam in Texas.
As the search continued for bodies from Hurricane Katrina on August 29, New Orleans saw new flooding from the heavy rain from Rita.
Flood waters breached one protective wall on the Industrial Canal and went over the top of the opposite side and was soon at waist height.
New Orleans was devastated by flooding after Katrina for which the death toll rose on Friday to 1 075.
Only the most hardy survivors from Hurricane Katrina remained in New Orleans because of the terrible conditions.
The US military airlifted thousands of people out of Port Arthur and surrounding refinery districts amid fears that it would bear the brunt of Rita's remaining force.
About 99% of United States oil production and 72% of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico already had been halted as companies abandoned platforms, said US authorities.
About one million people fled the Texas city of Houston, according to officials.
The port city of Galveston, where 8 000 to 12 000 people died in a 1900 hurricane, the deadliest US natural disaster yet, was virtually empty.
Computer projections warned that the city, built on a low-lying barrier island, could be swallowed up by a flood tide.
'It feels like a ghost town'
Galveston city manager Steven Leblanc estimated that 90% of the city's nearly 60 000 residents had fled.
"It feels like a ghost town to me, and that's a good thing," he said.
Scores of hospitals along the evacuation routes out of Houston closed their doors to new patients after they were swamped with heat-exhaustion victims after temperatures reached 37°C.
Regional shelters were already full, and many people slept in cars outside overbooked hotels.
Rita lost some power on Thursday and Friday and was downgraded to a category three storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.
Katrina was a category four storm when it hit Louisiana and Mississippi.
- AFP
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