'Scary' Rita Strengthens In Gulf

Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast as a Category 5, 165-mph monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland. Category 5 is the highest on the scale, and only three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland — most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

"It's scary. It's really scary," Shalonda Dunn said as she and her 5- and 9-year-old daughters waited to board a bus arranged by emergency authorities in Galveston. "I'm glad we've got the opportunity to leave. ... You never know what can happen."

All of Galveston, low-lying sections of Houston and Corpus Christi, and a mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders, one day after Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys as a far weaker storm and caused minor damage.

CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports that late Wednesday, Galveston was becoming a ghost town, as the sick were loaded into helicopters and

CBS News hurricane analyst Neil Frank reports that Rita's storm surge could be as much as 20 feet high, meaning the barrier island of Galveston could be under water.

Having seen what Hurricane Katrina — a Category-4, 145-mph storm — did three weeks ago, many people were taking no chances as Rita swirled 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.

"I really think it is going to be bad. That's really why I'm running. All these years I've stayed here, but I've got to go this time," said 65-year-old Barbara Anders. "I don't have but one life, and it is time for me to go."

The federal government was eager to show it, too, had learned its lesson after being criticized for its sluggish response to Katrina. CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston reports that the government rushed hundreds of truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals to the Gulf Coast and

"We want to make sure that the things that are delivered are delivered in the right place at the right time," said Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff.

By early afternoon, Rita was centered more than 700 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, drawing strength from the warm waters of the gulf. 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.

Hurricane Rita is very similar to Hurricane Katrina, but high pressure to the north will push the storm a little further to the west, said hurricane expert Bryan Norcross of CBS Station WFOR-TV in Miami.

"Right now it's running over a loop current — a deep pool of warm water in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico," Norcross said. He said this will likely strengthen the hurricane.

But Norcross added that Rita also has quite a bit other waters to traverse in the western part of the Gulf of Mexico that will then weaken it.

"But likely, a major hurricane is coming ashore," Norcross said.

Altogether, as many as 1 million people in the Houston-Galveston area were under orders to get out, including all of Galveston County, population 267,000, authorities said. About 10,000 people in vulnerable sections of Corpus Christi were also warned to get out. Along the Louisiana coast, some 20,000 people or more were being evacuated or were told to leave.

Galveston, situated on an 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 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.

Meanwhile, The death toll from Katrina along the Gulf Coast climbed past 1,000 Wednesday 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.

Buses stood by at the city's convention center to evacuate the 400 to 500 residents Mayor Ray Nagin estimated were left in the main part of the city, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Two busloads left on Tuesday. But almost no one showed up Wednesday morning.

The evacuation order meant that for the second time in 3 1/2 weeks, many New Orleans residents were forced to decide whether to stay or go. Also, many Katrina victims still in shelters faced the prospect of being uprooted again. At the Cajun Dome in Lafayette, emergency officials arranged to take the 1,000 refugees from the New Orleans area out on buses if Rita tracks north.

Rita, based on its current internal pressure, would be the most intense hurricane ever to strike Texas, stronger even than an unnamed storm that hit Indianola in 1886. Accurate wind speed measurements are not available that far back.

Never before has the mainland been hit by two storms of Category 4 or higher in the same year, according to government forecasters.

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.