Hurricane Rita upgraded to Category 4
Maximum sustained winds reach 135 mph
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; Posted: 8:06 a.m. EDT (12:06 GMT)
KEY LARGO, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Rita picked up strength Wednesday as it churned toward the Texas Gulf Coast and was upgraded to a Category 4 storm with winds topping 135 mph.
At 8 a.m. ET, Rita centered was about 195 miles west of Key West, Florida, and 790 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas.
The latest extended forecast from the hurricane center has Rita gathering strength before the eye makes landfall near Galveston, Texas, late Friday or early Saturday. That would place Rita about midway between New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas.
A Category 4 storm, with top sustained winds of 131 to 155 mph, can cause extreme damage, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale measuring hurricane strength.
Galveston orders evacuations
In Galveston, a city of 60,000 flattened by a hurricane in 1900, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas declared a state of emergency Tuesday night and ordered mandatory evacuations of nursing homes, assisted living centers and similar facilities starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday. The evacuation plan applies to all of Galveston County.
She also said mandatory evacuations of other parts of the city would begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and continue into Thursday. The evacuations are being done in phases, according to where people live. Galveston schools will close, beginning Wednesday, Thomas said.
"Conditions in the central Gulf are much like they were for Katrina," hurricane center meteorologist Ed Rappaport told CNN Tuesday evening.
Nearly 1,000 deaths have been blamed on Hurricane Katrina, which struck August 29.
Saying an effective response to Hurricane Rita is "beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco on Tuesday asked President Bush to declare a state of emergency ahead of the storm. (Full story)
Blanco declared a state of emergency for parishes in the southwestern portion of her state in case Rita hits closer to the Texas state line.
"Right now it's between Galveston and Brownsville, which is a little bit further west from Louisiana," Blanco said. "We are still concerned, though, about the possibility of rising waters, tides that may be higher than normal. They could be 2 to 3 feet higher than normal, which could impact our low-lying areas in this region of the state, in the southeast region."
Louisiana officials are looking for additional shelter space in case Rita heads there. As a result of Katrina, 13,000 people are housed in shelters south of Interstate 10, the area considered most vulnerable to hurricanes.
Rita is expected to produce additional rainfall accumulations of 2 to 4 inches over the Florida Keys and the southern Florida Peninsula, with isolated storm total amounts of 12 inches. Rainfall totals of 6 to 10 inches are possible over western Cuba and 1 to 3 inches over the northern Yucatan Peninsula, with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches over portions of western Cuba.
New Orleans gets ready
New Orleans began the process of evacuating the few residents who remain in the hurricane-ravaged city Tuesday ahead of a new threat from Rita, Mayor Ray Nagin said.
Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the federal point man for recovery efforts, said 500 buses are standing by to take people out of the city, and contingency plans were being made to use commercial jetliners to get people out if necessary.
"I think the federal government, the state government and local government are a lot smarter this time around," Nagin said.
During his fifth visit to Louisiana to monitor recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina, President Bush on Tuesday issued a federal emergency declaration for the state of Florida, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts there. (Full story)
U.S. military troops and equipment in Louisiana that had been brought in to help in the aftermath of Katrina were considering evacuations if Rita continued on its current path.
The warships USS Iwo Jima and USS Shreveport have orders to steam out of New Orleans Wednesday if the storm stayed on course, the U.S. Northern Command said Tuesday.
The Northern Command also is identifying shelters and havens outside of New Orleans it might use to house the thousands of National Guard and active duty troops now engaged in relief efforts.
National Guard troops in southeast Louisiana may be repositioned to high-rise parking lots and similar facilities to be ready to react in case there's more flooding in New Orleans, said Brig. Gen. Joseph "Brod" Veillon.
Lt. Col. William J. Doran III of the state's Office of Emergency Preparedness said Tuesday that 3,000 buses are available to Louisiana's parishes for evacuations.
So far, none have been requested.
Rita's designation as a hurricane makes it the ninth in the busy 2005 Atlantic season, which has seen 17 named storms, with more than two months left to go.
Army Corps of Engineers Col. Duane Gapinski, in charge of draining New Orleans, said Tuesday night that even if Rita dumps 3 inches of rain over a six-hour period, causing 2 feet to 4 feet of flooding, the Corps should be able to pump the water out in a couple of days.
The Corps declared New Orleans "essentially dry" Tuesday night, after pumping three-quarters of a trillion gallons of water from the city into Lake Pontchartrain in the past 2 1/2 weeks. (Full story)
CNN's Dan Lothian, John Zarrella, Rob Marciano, Barbara Starr and Shelby Linn contributed to this report.
