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Hurricane Rita pounds Texas, Louisiana; Houston escapes

It smashes windows, sparks fires and knocks power out to 1 million people

BRUNT OF HURRICANE: A burnt-out car lies amid the charred rubble of a building in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita in Galveston, Texas, on Saturday. -- PHOTO: AP

BEAUMONT (TEXAS): : Hurricane Rita slammed into Texas and Louisiana early Saturday, smashing windows, sparking fires and knocking power out to more than one million customers, but largely sparing vulnerable Houston and already reeling New Orleans.

Rita made landfall at 0730 GMT as a Category 3 storm just east of the Sabine Pass, on the Texas-Louisiana line, bringing top winds of 193 kmph and warnings of up to 64 cm of rain, the National Hurricane Centre said. By late morning, it had weakened to barely above hurricane status, with its sustained winds at 75 mph (121 kmph) as it moved north near Jasper.

Fears of severe flooding persisted; parts of the east Texas counties of Jasper and Tyler received 25-30 cm of rain, the National Weather Service said.

There were no immediate reports of fatalities or any detailed word on damage to vast oil refinery industry in the area. Rescuers and search teams in many areas had to wait for winds to subside. About three million people fled an 800-km stretch of the Texas-Louisiana coast ahead of the storm, keeping in mind the devastating toll Hurricane Katrina inflicted on New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast barely three weeks ago.

The storm spun off tornadoes as it churned northwest, causing transformers to explode. In the Jasper county, a house with seven persons inside floated in floodwaters after it came off its foundation, the sheriff's communications supervisor, Alice Duckworth, said.

But the flood-prone cities of Houston and Galveston — largely evacuated over the past four days — escaped a direct hit. ``So far, Houston is weathering the storm,'' Mayor Bill White said.

In New Orleans, rain drenched parts of the abandoned city early Saturday, straining the levee system damaged by Katrina and causing more flooding in already ruined and abandoned poor neighbourhoods.

In Lake Charles, home to the nation's 12th-largest seaport and refineries run by ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Citgo and Shell, nearly all 70,000 residents had evacuated. Several riverboat casinos, which mostly serve tourists from Texas, closed ahead of the storm. — AP

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