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Hurricane Rita strengthened on Wednesday into a powerful, intensely dangerous Category 5 storm as it headed toward the Texas coast and prompted evacuation orders for more than a million people. President George W. Bush declared emergencies for Texas and Louisiana.
 Forecasters say 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 US mainland. |  |
More than a 1.3 million people have been evacuated in Texas and Louisiana by authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina. The storm had grown into the third most intense Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by internal pressure, the US National Hurricane Centre said. The hurricane centre said Rita was "a potentially catastrophic" Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds rising to 175 mph over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That matched the peak strength over water of last month's devastating Hurricane Katrina, which hit land as a Category 4 storm with 145-mph winds. A hurricane watch was issued for the US Gulf Coast from Fort Mansfield Texas, to Cameron, Louisiana. Rita was expected to come ashore late on Friday or early on Saturday as a "major hurricane ... at (Category 3) or higher," hurricane centre forecaster Robbie Berg said. Just three weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita pounded the fragile Florida Keys islands leaving more than 24,000 homes without power. Hurricane warnings have been posted and 80,000 residents were ordered to evacuate the Florida Keys on Monday. "Tropical Storm Rita is a serious threat. Do not underestimate this storm," said Miami-Dade Mayor Carols Alavrez. "Stay home. No matter what, we're going to have lousy weather." Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco also urged everyone in the southwestern part of the state to prepare to evacuate. "If Rita passes us by, we will thank the Lord for our blessings." The Army Corps of Engineers is racing to repair the already weakened New Orleans' levee system and residents started evacuating. The Corps drove a massive metal barrier across the 17th Street Canal bed to prevent a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain from swamping New Orleans again.
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