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Traffic horror as locals flee
23/09/2005 14:50 - (SA)
Galveston - More than one million people clogged highways and piled into buses in a traffic snarling exodus as Hurricane Rita ripped towards oil industry citadel Houston on Thursday and threatened a dangerous glancing blow for storm-ravaged New Orleans.
Category Four Rita whipped up winds of 241km/h in the Gulf of Mexico, portending huge flood tides and new turmoil for politicians still struggling with the fallout from Hurricane Katrina's deadly landfall on August 29.
"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."
Roads jammed
Tens of thousands of people jammed roads out of Galveston, Texas.
"I have been here all my life," said Morgan Selby, 49, at the wheel of a pickup truck crammed with belongings as he left his home.
Like Selby, most of Galveston's 60 000 residents had decided to outrun Rita, as ambulances sirens blaring, rushed patients from hospitals, and school buses ferried people out.
"I would say that we probably have 90% of our residents have left the island. It feels like a ghost town to me, and that's a good thing," said Steven Leblanc, Galveston city manager.
In Houston, 80km to the north, drivers jammed the I-45 highway out of the city, with reports of 14 hour delays, tailbacks and severe fuel shortages.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre, after downgrading Rita from a maximum Category Five storm earlier, projected that the core of the hurricane would hit southwest Louisiana and the Texas coast, just east of Galveston, late on Friday.
A quarter of US oil operations are based in the Gulf of Mexico area. BP, Shell and other oil companies evacuated more than 600 oil platforms and rigs. The majority of oil production in the Gulf has been shut down.
- AFP
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