US authorities have urged residents of Houston and most of the Texas coastline to evacuate ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Rita, the first major hurricane to threaten the region since Hurricane Katrine devestated US Gulf Coast two weeks ago.
Hospitals and nursing homes have been evacuated and as many as 1 million other people have been ordered to leave the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Rita was categorised a powerful Category 4 storm.
The city of Galveston, vulnerable sections of Houston and Corpus Christi, and New Orleans are under mandatory evacuation orders.
Having seen what 145-mph Hurricane Katrina did three weeks ago, many people are taking no chances as Rita swirled its way across the Gulf of Mexico.
"After this killer in New Orleans, Katrina, I just cannot fathom staying," 59-year-old Ldyyan Jean Jocque said before sunrise as she waited for an evacuation bus outside the Galveston Community Center. She had packed her Bible, some music and clothes into plastic bags and loaded her dog into a pet carrier.
The federal government was eager to show it, too, had learned its lesson after being criticised for its sluggish response to Katrina. It rushed hundreds of truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals to the Gulf Coast and put rescue and medical teams on standby.
"You can't play around with this storm," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on ABC's "Good Morning America." He added: "The lesson is that when the storm hits, the best place to be is to be out of the path of the storm."
By early afternoon, Rita was a Category 4 storm centered more than 700 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, with winds of 150 mph. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore Saturday along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi. But even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to New Orleans.
Meteorologist Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Rita could strengthen into a terrifying Category 5 with wind over 155 mph as it moves over the warm waters of the gulf.
Galveston County, population 267,000, was ordered evacuated, along with low-lying, flood-prone areas of Houston, which at its lowest point is 6 feet above sea level. Altogether, as many as 1 million people in the Houston-Galveston area were under orders to get out, said Frank Michel, spokesman for Houston Mayor Bill White. Houston is about 50 miles northwest of Galveston.
Along the Louisiana coast, some 20,000 people or more were being evacuated or were warned to leave.
Galveston, situated on an island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history: an unnamed hurricane in 1900 that killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and practically wiped the city off the map.
The last major hurricane to hit Texas was Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead. The damage from the Category 3 storm was put at more than $2 billion. Tropical Storm Allison flooded Houston in 2001, doing major damage to hospitals and research centers and killing 23 people.
"Let's hope that the hurricane does not hit at a Category 4 strength and let's hope the lessons we've learned - the painful, tragic lessons that have been learned in the last few weeks - will best prepare us for what could happen with Rita," Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu said in New York.
The death toll from Katrina along the Gulf Coast climbed past 1,000 today to 1,036. The body count in Louisiana alone was put at 799 by the state Health Department.
In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers raced to patch the city's fractured levee system for fear the additional rain from Rita could swamp the walls and flood the city all over again. The Corps said New Orleans' levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.
"The protection is very tenuous at best," said Dave Wurtzel, a Corps official handling some of the repairs.
Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.