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Rita unleashes Category 5 fury over U.S. Gulf
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-22 07:17

Galveston, a city of 58,000 on a coastal island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. 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 strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.

In Houston, the state's largest city and home to the highest concentration of Katrina refugees, the area's geography makes evacuation particularly tricky. While many hurricane-prone cities are right on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland, so a coastal suburban area of 2 million people must evacuate through a metropolitan area of 4 million people where the freeways are often clogged under the best of circumstances.

Mayor Bill White urged residents to look out for more than themselves.

"There will not be enough government vehicles to go and evacuate everybody in every area," he said. "We need neighbor caring for neighbor."

At the Galveston Community Center, where 1,500 evacuees had been put on school buses to points inland, another lesson from Katrina was put into practice: To overcome the reluctance of people to evacuate without their pets, they were allowed to bring them along in crates.

"It was quite a sight," said Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "We were able to put people on with their dog crates, their cat crates, their shopping carts. It went very well."

US NOAA composite satellite and data image rendered on September 21, 2005, of Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico as a Category Five storm on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale with U.S. energy assets in the Gulf, including oil platforms and pipelines. [Reuters]

Some 600 public housing residents were among those evacuated by bus, and city officials reassured residents no one would be left behind.

"After this killer in New Orleans, Katrina, I just cannot fathom staying," said 59-year-old Ldyyan Jean Jocque, who carried her Bible, a change of clothes and her dog.

Barbara Anders, a 65-year-old woman who uses a walker, also made her way to a bus. "I really think it is going to be bad. That's really why I'm running. All these years I've stayed here," she said, "but I've got to go this time,"

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