The Omnibus

Issue date: 9/23/05 Section: News

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Over a million people along the Texas coast have fled their homes as Hurricane Rita, developing into one of the most intense storms on record, draws closer.

President Bush's administration has declared Hurricane Rita a national emergency days before its expected landfall. Now classified as a "category five" hurricane with winds of nearly 170 mph, Rita is expected to reach the Texas shore late Friday night or early Saturday morning.

The Homeland Security Department declared Rita an "incident of national significance," releasing a quick and massive federal response to the destruction now expected to exceed state and local capabilities. Such a federal designation for Katrina was not triggered until a day after that storm hit three weeks ago.

Residents of the island city of Galveston, and those in the low-lying parts of Houston 50 miles inland, were among the 1.3 million Texans told to evacuate.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said 5,000 Texas National Guard troops are on standby and 1,000 Department of Public Safety officers have been placed along evacuation routes, ready to move in after Rita's landfall.

Shelters for 250,000 evacuees were being established in the Texas towns of Huntsville, College Station, San Antonio and Dallas.

The U.S. National Hurricane Centre warned that the storm was "potentially catastrophic." Only three category five hurricanes, the highest on the scale, are known to have hit the American mainland...the most recent being Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Katrina, a category five hurricane when it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, was downgraded to a category four storm with 145 mph winds by the time it made landfall.

According to Kermit Hargis, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Polk County, the latest National Weather Service computer models continued to show the remains of Hurricane Rita could track over Southwest Missouri sometime late Sunday and / or early Monday. Hargis says the main threat with Rita continues to be heavy rain and high winds in the Southwest Missouri area. He says an estimate of rainfall totals could be available today (Friday) from the National Weather Service, but a more accurate rainfall total would be available when Rita makes landfall and moves into Northern Texas and Southern Oklahoma.

While Rita will lose most of it's punch before it reaches Southwest Missouri, Hargis says the storm could still be powerful enough to create some flooding and damage in the Polk County area, which includes the city of Bolivar and Southwest Baptist University. Hargis said he would send out an update on the storm today once the information becomes available from the National Weather Service.

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