Approaching Rita already causing havoc
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-24 08:55

Hurricane Rita steamed toward refinery towns along the Texas-Louisiana coast with 125 mph winds Friday, creating havoc even before it arrived: Levee breaks caused new flooding in New Orleans, and as many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying nursing-home evacuees caught fire in a traffic jam.

Rita weakened during the day into a Category 3 hurricane after raging as a Category 5, 175-mph monster earlier in the week. But it was still a highly dangerous storm.

An unidentified camera crew makes its way by boat through the newly flooded Ninth Ward in New Orleans, September 23, 2005. Texas officials warned of catastrophe and an already devastated New Orleans suffered renewed flooding as weakened levees gave way in the hours before Hurricane Rita's expected strike at the U.S. Gulf Coast. [Reuters]

The hurricane was expected to come ashore early Saturday on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston but slam the oil refining towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles, La., with a 20-foot storm surge, towering waves and up to 25 inches of rain.

"We're going to get through this," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. "Be calm, be strong, say a prayer for Texas."

Rita threatened dozens of refineries and chemical plants along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast that represent a quarter of the nation's oil refining capacity. Environmentalists warned of the risk of a toxic spill, and business analysts said Rita could cause already-high gasoline prices to rise to as much as $4 a gallon.

In the storm's cross-hairs were the marshy towns along the Louisiana line: Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 where the main industries include oil, shrimping and crawfishing; and Beaumont, a port city of about 114,000 that was the birthplace of the modern oil industry. It was in Beaumont that the Spindletop well erupted in a 100-foot gusher in 1901 and gave rise to such giants as Gulf, Humble and Texaco.

Kandy Huffman had no way to leave, and she pushed her broken-down car down the street to her home with plans to ride out the storm in an otherwise-deserted Port Arthur, where the streetlights were turned off and stores were boarded up.