US: Traffic jams stretched for 100 miles outside Houston, Texas, yesterday as hundreds of thousands tried to flee the city before Hurricane Rita came ashore. Local authorities banned southbound traffic into the city, opening all eight lanes of the interstate highway north of Houston to vehicles travelling inland.
With hotels full all the way to Arkansas and Oklahoma and petrol shortages reported throughout Texas, many evacuees were unsure of where they would find shelter. Some turned back, boarding themselves up in their homes to await the storm, but Harris County judge Robert Eckels told them they were making a mistake.
"Don't follow the example of Katrina and wait. No one will come and get you during the storm," he said.
Rita weakened yesterday to a category four storm but it remains as strong as Hurricane Katrina, which claimed at least 1,036 lives when it swept through southern Louisiana and Mississippi almost four weeks ago.
Rita is heading for the south coast of Texas and the south-west of Louisiana, threatening to overwhelm Galveston, a port city that was almost wiped out by a hurricane in 1900 which killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Weather forecasters expect the storm to flood a 5m seawall built after the 1900 hurricane to protect the city, which is just over 2m above sea level.
Galveston was almost empty yesterday as buses evacuated those without cars, and helicopters airlifted patients out of hospitals and nursing homes. In a move designed to ensure that everyone, particularly older residents, would leave, evacuees were allowed to take their pets.
The city's mayor, Lyda Ann Thomas, said Galveston had learnt the lesson of Hurricane Katrina and was preparing for the worst. "The city of Galveston has plans to exist without outside help at all for at least three days because New Orleans was cut off for so long," she said.
Houston is 60 miles inland but it is low-lying and flat, built on clay, which absorbs water poorly, and surrounded by swamps that overflow even in heavy rainstorms. Nasa shut down its headquarters south of the city yesterday, handing over control of the International Space Station to its Russian counterpart.
More than 70 per cent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut down as Rita threatens refineries that account for a quarter of America's refining capacity.
Among the evacuees leaving Houston yesterday were thousands of people who had fled to the city from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They left Houston as they arrived - on buses, carrying a few possessions in plastic bags and heading to a makeshift shelter far from home.
Federal authorities are better prepared this time, rushing truckloads of water, ice and ready- to-eat meals to the threatened region and putting rescue teams on standby.
In New Orleans, army engineers continued to repair pumps and strengthen levees that were damaged by Katrina, but experts warned that the new hurricane could flood the city all over again.