Hurricane Rita ploughed into the Gulf of Mexico coast early today, lashing Texas and Louisiana with driving rain, flooding low-lying regions, knocking power out to nearly a million customers and sparking fires across the region.

Hurricane Rita ploughed into the Gulf Coast early today, lashing Texas and Louisiana with driving rain, threatening to flood low-lying regions and knocking power out to half a million people as transformers exploded in the pre-dawn sky.

Hurricane Rita ploughed into the Gulf Coast early today, lashing Texas and Louisiana with driving rain, igniting the pre-dawn sky with exploding transformers and threatening to flood the low-lying region.

Hurricane Rita steamed toward refinery towns along the Texas-Louisiana coast with 120mph winds early today, creating havoc even before it arrived.

Hurricane Rita’s wind and rain breached two of New Orleans’ battered levees today and sent water gushing into already-devastated neighbourhoods just days after they had been pumped dry.

Hurricane Rita is expected to destroy almost 5,700 homes and affect more than five million Texans when it slams into the US coast overnight, officials said.

Frustation and fear continues to mount along Texas highways today as people seek to escape Hurricane Rita.

A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire early today on gridlocked Interstate 45 in Texas, killing or injuring an unknown number of passengers.

A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire early today on gridlocked Interstate 45 in Texas, killing or injuring an unknown number of passengers.

Hurricane Rita roared toward the Texas and Louisiana coasts early today, a major Category 4 storm that spurred a traffic-snarled exodus toward higher ground and fears it could cripple the heart of the US petrochemical industry.

Hurricane Rita closed in on the Texas Gulf Coast and the heart of the US oil-refining industry with howling 145 mph winds, but a sharper-than-expected turn to the right set it on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit.

The outer bands of rain from Hurricane Rita began falling in New Orleans today, and forecasts of between 8 and 13 centimetres of rainfall in the coming days raised fears the patched levee system could fail and flood the city all over again.

Traffic came to a standstill and petrol shortages were reported today as hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston metropolitan area rushed to get out of the path of Hurricane Rita, a monster storm with 170mph winds.

The International Energy Agency has emergency procedures to release energy stocks if Hurricane Rita disrupts oil supplies from the Gulf of Mexico, IEA director Claude Mandil said today.

Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast as a Category 5, 175-mph monster today as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.

Hospital and nursing home patients were evacuated and as many as one million others were ordered to clear out along the Gulf Coast today as Hurricane Rita intensified into a Category 4 storm with 140mph winds that could batter Texas and bring more misery to New Orleans by the weekend.

Hurricane Rita strengthened into a Category 4 storm packing 135-mph winds as it churned into the Gulf of Mexico early today.

Hurricane Rita strengthened into a Category 4 storm packing 135-mph winds as it churned into the Gulf of Mexico early today.

Hurricane Rita strengthened to a dangerous Category 3 storm early today, sparing the Florida Keys but prompting mandatory orders to once again evacuate New Orleans as well as the Texas city of Galveston.

Hurricane Rita strengthened into a Category 3 storm with 115 mph winds early today after lashing the Florida Keys and sparking anxiety as it headed into the Gulf of Mexico.