Hurricane Rita brings widespread power cuts

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.

Rita made landfall at 3.30am local time (08.30 Irish time) as a Category 3 storm just east of Sabine Pass, on the Texas-Louisiana border, bringing a 20-foot storm surge and up to 25 inches of rain, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

Residents called police to report roofs being ripped off and downed trees. Rescuers were forced to wait until the winds outside died down to safe levels.

“We can’t even get out to check yet,” said Sgt. Wendell Carroll of Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office. “All we can hear is the wind a howling.”

The storm spread worries it would dump nearly 2 feet of rain on flood-prone parts of Texas and Louisiana, spurring tornadoes as it churned north-west at 12 mph with winds topping 120 mph.

Officials breathed a sigh of relief that Rita spared the flood-prone cities of Houston and Galveston a direct hit. “It looks like the Houston and Galveston area has really lucked out,” said Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane centre.

Asked how Rita compared with the earlier devastating hit of Hurricane Katrina, Mayfield said: “It’s not as powerful, not as large and it did not hit as populated an area.”

Officials estimated at least 90% of surrounding Jefferson County residents had heeded warnings that a storm surge could submerge swaths of the low-lying county - including the seawall-and-levee-protected city of Port Arthur, near Sabine Pass.

KHOU-TV in Houston reported that there were multiple fires in and around the city. In a hotel in Beaumont, near where Rita struck, windows were blown out and shards of glass and pieces of trees were strewn throughout the flooding lobby, the station reported.

More than 450,000 CenterPoint Energy customers in Texas were without power in the company’s service area, which stretches from Galveston into Houston north to Humble, company spokeswoman Patricia Frank said. Entergy spokesman David Caplan said about 55,000 of its Texas customers in the storm-affected area were without electricity.

Rita’s heaviest rains – up to 3 to 4 inches an hour – fell in Lake Charles, Louisiana, National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Omundsont said. The town had 8 inches of rain more than two hours before the storm’s landfall. Near the coastal town of Cameron, the weather service recorded a wind gust of 112 mph as the storm’s centre approached.

The storm brought chaos even far from its path. Rain in New Orleans re-ruptured levees that were broken by Hurricane Katrina, bringing renewed flooding to that city. South of Dallas, a bus of Rita evacuees from Houston caught fire in gridlocked traffic, killing as many as 24 nursing home residents who thought they were getting out of harm’s way.

In Galveston, about 100 miles away from the storm’s eye, a fire erupted in the historic Strand district late last night. Wind-whipped flames leapt across three buildings. City manager Steve LeBlanc said the blaze could have been caused by downed power lines.

“It was like a war zone, shooting fire across the street,” Fire Chief Michael Varela said.

As the storm raged, the torches of oil refineries could still be seen burning in the distance from downtown Beaumont. Officials worried about the storm’s threat to those facilities and chemical plants strung along the Texas and Louisiana coast.

The facilities represent a quarter of the nation’s oil refining capacity and business analysts said damage from Rita could send gas prices as high as 4 an hour. Environmentalists warned of the risk of a toxic spill.

As Rita approached, its powerful rains and winds sent water gushing over one of New Orleans’ patched levees and into the already-devastated Ninth Ward and parts of neighbouring St. Bernard Parish. The water rose to waist level.

“Our worst fears came true,” said Maj. Barry Guidry, a National Guardsman on duty in the Ninth Ward. Another levee could not protect homes in the Gentilly neighbourhood, now under 6 to 8 inches of water.

In the days before the storm’s arrival, hundreds of thousands of residents of Texas and Louisiana fled their homes in a mass exodus of 2.8 million people that produced gridlock and heartbreak.

Grocery shelves were emptied, petrol stations ran out of fuel and motorists had to push their cars to the side of highways after idling for hours in stuck traffic and running out of petrol.

In Tyler, about 100 miles south-east of Dallas, officials said their shelters were full and refugees who continued to arrive from the south were being directed elsewhere. About 3,700 people were housed in 23 packed county shelters.

President George Bush, mindful of criticism the federal government was slow to respond to Katrina, plans to visit his home state today. He will go to the state’s emergency operations centre in Austin and then to San Antonio.