Howlin' Hurricane Rita

At 11am Friday, Rita was downgraded to a Category Three storm by the National Hurricane Center. Just offshore Texas and Louisiana in the Gulf Coast, Rita is predicted to make landfall early Saturday morning. Federal, state and local agencies have been taking the threat of the storm much more seriously than they did Katrina, so millions are currently being evacuated from Southeast Texas and Louisiana.

Below is a roundup of the latest news from national and local sources, as well as first-person commentary from bloggers and AlterNet readers.

From EmergencyEmail.org:

At 1pm CDT ... The center of Hurricane Rita was located about 190 miles southeast of Galveston, Tex., and about 175 miles southeast of Port Arthur, Tex.

Rita is moving toward the northwest near 10 mph and is expected to continue during the next 24 hours. The core of Rita will make landfall near the southwest Louisiana and Upper Texas coasts early Saturday.

Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 125 mpg with higher gusts. Rita is now a Category Three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. A further slow weakening is possible before landfall, but Rita is still expected to come ashore as a dangerous hurricane.

New Waves of Damage to Louisiana

The first effects of Rita have begun to hit Louisiana already. Areas of New Orleans that were completely devastated by Hurricane Katrina have flooded again:

Hurricane Rita's steady rains sent water pouring over a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighborhoods 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. Guidry said water was rising about three inches a minute.

Water also poured out from under the canal's western barrier, which faces the historic French Quarter roughly three miles away.

An official with the New Orleans Fire Department said flooding reached a mile inland west of the canal. It also reached as far north as Interstate 10, which divides the city.

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

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a series of stories about the hurricane, including:

• A "five-day struggle" by guards at Orleans Parish Prison to keep desperate inmates at bay as the hurricane struck New Orleans;
• The repeated uprooting of 3,000 Katrina victims from Calcasieu Parish to Alexandria;
• And also the deep disconnect between what President Bush was saying in his press conference and what is happening among his constituents.

Texas News

The San Antonio Express-News covers yesterday's horrendous traffic jam:

With Hurricane Rita roaring in from the Gulf of Mexico, many of the Houston area's 4.7 million residents bailed out Thursday, creating bumper-to-bumper congestion that stretched up to 100 miles.

"I don't think there's much question. I believe this is the largest traffic jam we've ever had in Texas," said Mark Cross, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation.

An estimated 1.8 million people in Texas and Louisiana have been told to evacuate.

To accommodate the unprecedented exodus from Houston, officials opened all lanes on Interstate 10 to evacuating motorists as far west as Seguin and all lanes for northbound motorists on Interstate 45.

Even so, motorists endured 15-hour trips from Houston to San Antonio and Dallas. [Respectively 189 and 224 miles, as the crow flies -- ed.]

The San Antonio Express-News is covering the first wave of Rita evacuees pouring into the city:

The scene at KellyUSA is starting to look like re-runs to Red Cross volunteers and local officials as hurricane evacuees again pour into San Antonio. More than 13,000 people have already been processed by the Red Cross as they sought shelter escaping the Texas coastal towns and Houston in anticipation of Hurricane Rita's arrival early Saturday morning.

The difference in the landscape today versus that of three weeks ago is the sea of personal cars parked at the shelters as evacuees arrive in the Alamo City via bus, plane and personal car. [...]

Evacuees are being supplied with new cots, after the shelter was turned over after serving Katrina evacuees, and the temporary facilities have been removed. Permanent shower and laundry facilities are up and running. [...]

Officials reported that 10 planes have already delivered as many as 2,000 people from Beaumont in addition to the people arriving by car.

The AP has a report about the bus fire that killed as many as 24 seniors as they were evacuating:

The bus was carrying 38 residents and six employees of the Brighton Gardens nursing home in Bellaire, according to Sunrise Senior Living, the McLean, Va., company that owns the center. The bus was en route to another home owned by the same company, according to a Baylor University Medical Center spokeswoman.

Early indications were that the bus caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Peritz said. He said the brakes may have been on fire. The bus was engulfed with flames, causing a lengthy backup on Interstate 45 already congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast.

On the Blogging Front