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Hurricane Rita: highways become near-death traps

24 killed in bus fire; thousands trapped on escape routes

EXODUS: Thousands fleeing the Texas Gulf Coast crowd the airport in Houston on Thursday as evacuation in advance of Hurricane Rita continues. — PHOTO: AP

HOUSTON: As Hurricane Rita roared towards Texas and Louisiana, evacuation of thousands of persons who left home for safer destinations became difficult with chaotic highways, dipping gas gauge and no food and water even as a bus carrying elderly persons caught fire on a highway killing at least 24 along a major escape route.

More than 2 million persons were leaving the Gulf Coastal areas and Houston as the Category 4 hurricane barrelled northwest across the Gulf with winds near 220 kph. The 640 km-wide storm could also prove to be extremely dangerous to the numerous oil refineries in Texas.

The bus filled with the elderly passengers caught fire on Friday on gridlocked Interstate 45, killing at least 24 passengers. The bus was engulfed with flames, causing a 27-km backup on a freeway that was already heavily congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast.

Thousands of people were trapped on the highways since Thursday, in a bumper-to-bumper mass exodus from the fourth largest city in the U.S. Buses carrying water and a possible evacuation method were dispatched to thousands of drivers stranded in traffic jams on the city most congested freeways, but fuel remained the most precious item for motorists, many of them who ran out of gas in 14-hour traffic jams.

Governor Rick Perry also ordered an unprecedented ``contra-flow,'' opening 200 km of the southbound lanes of Interstate 45 to northbound traffic, doubling the flow to eight lanes on the major evacuation route222

Devastating repeat

The hurricane's steady rains sent water pouring through breaches in a patched levee on Friday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighbourhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans' flooding nightmare.

``Our worst fears came true,'' said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard. ``We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly,'' he said. ``At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger.''

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Maj. Guidry said water was rising about 3 inches a minute.

The impoverished neighbourhood was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina's floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before Hurricane Rita struck.

Throughout Friday morning, water began rising again onto buckled homes, piles of rubble and mud-caked cars that Katrina had covered with up to 20 feet of water. Sally Forman, an aide to Mayor Ray Nagin, said officials knew the levees were compromised, but they believe that the Ninth Ward is cleared of residents. ``I wouldn't imagine there's one person down there,'' Forman said. — PTI, AP

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