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Over a million flee as hurricane nears Texas

Rita could be one of the strongest storms to hit coast

GALVESTON (TEXAS): Hurricane Rita grew into a monster storm with 280-kmph sustained winds as it swirled toward the U.S. Gulf coast, prompting more than 1.3 million residents in Texas and Louisiana to flee in hopes of avoiding a deadly repeat of Katrina.

``It's not worth staying here,'' said Celia Martinez as she and several relatives finished packing up their homes and pets to head to Houston. ``Life is more important than things.''

As Governor Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating well in advance of Rita's predicted Saturday landfall, New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.

Threat to New Orleans

Galveston, Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County, low-lying parts of Houston, and New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Category 5 Rita drew energy from balmy gulf waters.

Forecasters said Rita could be the strongest hurricane on record to ever hit Texas.

Only three Category 5 hurricanes, the highest on the scale, are known to have hit the U.S. mainland — most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

Hundreds of buses were dispatched on Wednesday to evacuate the poor and move out hospital and nursing home patients, and truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and rescue and medical teams were on standby in an effort to show the lessons learned in Katrina.

``We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst,'' President George W. Bush said in Washington.

At 5 a.m. local time on Thursday, Rita was centred about 830 km east-southeast of Galveston and was moving west near 15 kmph. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 115 km could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans. — AP

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