Evacuee Bus Bursts Into Flames

24 Feared Dead As Thousands Of Gulf Coast Residents Flee Hurricane

(CBS/AP)  "Hopefully, we will get lucky and it goes into a part of Texas or Louisiana where there is not a lot of people or any buildings," Houston businessman Tillman Fertitta said.

Hurricane warnings were in effect from Port O'Connor, Texas, to Morgan City, La., and the National Hurricane Center forecast the storm would make landfall as a "dangerous hurricane of at least Category 3 intensity."

Tropical storm warnings also were in effect east and north to include New Orleans, still crippled by Hurricane Katrina. Rita's steady rains Thursday were the first since Katrina and the forecast was for 3 to 5 inches in the coming days - dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into recently dry neighborhoods.

Most residents aren't sticking around to see what happens, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. The city is deserted and The soldiers and emergency workers who came to help are now retreating.

"Hurricane Rita is a very dangerous storm," said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. "We're not letting our guards down."

The Army Corps of Engineers added sandbags to shore up New Orleans' levees and installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city's canals to protect against storm surges.

The Texas and Louisiana coast is home to the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries. Environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill from the 87 chemical plants and petroleum installations that represent more than one-fourth of U.S. refining capacity.

Petrochemical plants began shutting and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants that are "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."

The usually bustling tourist island of Galveston - rebuilt after as many as 12,000 people died in a 1900 hurricane - was all but abandoned, with at least 90 percent of its 58,000 residents cleared out.

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. The U.S. mainland has not been hit by two Category 4 storms in the same year since 1915. Katrina came ashore Aug. 29 as a Category 4.

Even once the storm passes, the danger may not be over.

"It looks like this storm actually may stall out over northeastern Texas and basically sit there for a couple of days, and if that happens, we're going to see some areas along the western sections of Louisiana and the eastern areas of Texas get up to 20 inches of rain with massive flooding, almost what we saw four years ago in Houston when Tropical Storm Allison dumped over 25 inches of rain over the city," warned Cullen.

At Houston's Johnson Space Center, NASA evacuated its staff, powered down the computers at Mission Control and turned the international space station over to the Russian space agency.

Parts of Houston simply emptied out.

"I would say half of the city is gone, at least," Chief Hurrt told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

Plastic grocery bags shrouding abandoned gasoline pumps rustled in the breeze. Freeways usually jammed around the clock were clear for miles. Acres of normally packed parking lots surrounding malls, schools and factories were bare.

"Katrina. It's scared everyone," said Dianna Soileau, 29, who was fleeing the refinery town of Texas City with her husband and two children. "We don't want to be the same thing."