Fires and floods hit hurricane-stricken US

There were no immediate reports of fatalities, though rescuers in many areas had to wait for winds to subside before launching searches. About 3 million people had fled a 500-mile stretch of the Texas-Louisiana coast ahead of the storm, motivated in part by the devastating toll that Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast barely three weeks ago.

The storm spun off tornadoes as it churned north-west at 12 mph, causing transformers to explode in the pre-dawn darkness.

In Jasper County, north of Beaumont, a house with seven people inside floated in floodwaters after it came off its foundation, said sheriff’s communications supervisor Alice Duckworth.

Duckworth said the 30 emergency workers were stuck in the emergency operations centre because of flooding. “We can’t get any fire trucks out,” she said.

Rita spared the flood-prone cities of Houston and Galveston a direct hit.

“So far, Houston is weathering the storm,” Mayor Bill White said. His police department received 28 burglary calls overnight and made 16 arrests – less than a typical Friday night, White said.

Rain drenched parts of New Orleans, straining the levee system already damaged by Katrina. Up to 3 inches of rain was expected throughout the day, less than had been previously forecast.

“Overall, it looks like New Orleans has lucked out,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Phil Grigsby said.

Heavy rain fell south of New Orleans in low-lying Jefferson Parish, where a tidal surge of six to seven feet swamped some neighbourhoods. Residents of Lafitte, a town of 1,600 south of New Orleans, were being evacuated by bus.

Fires were reported in and around Houston, including one in a two-story apartment building in south-east Houston that left at least eight units damaged, authorities said. Nobody was hurt, according to District Chief Jack Williams. Several buildings were damaged or destroyed by fire in Galveston, and a blaze broke out before dawn at a shopping complex in Pasadena. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

In the nine-story Elegante Hotel in Beaumont, near where Rita struck, wind blew out massive windows in the hotel lobby, bringing down a chandelier and ripping the roof off another section of lobby.

“We stayed in a stairwell most of the time,” Rainey Chretien, who works at the front desk. “I didn’t think it was going to be this bad.”

In Tyler County in eastern Texas, high winds ripped roofs off several buildings, including the police department in Woodville, sheriff’s Chief Deputy Clint Sturrock said.

In Newton County, on the Texas-Louisiana border, power was out and the wind was howling. “It’s blowing so hard here at the jail, it’s about to suck the doors out,” said county Judge Truman Dougharty.

More than 675,000 CenterPoint Energy customers in Texas were without power in the company’s service area, which stretches from Galveston into Houston north to Humble, company spokeswoman Patricia Frank said. Entergy spokesman David Caplan said about 250,000 of its Texas customers in the storm-affected area were without electricity.

Rita’s heaviest rains – up to 3 to 4 inches an hour – fell in Lake Charles, Louisiana, National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Omundson said. The town had 8 inches of rain more than two hours before the storm’s landfall. Near the coastal town of Cameron, the weather service recorded a wind gust of 112 mph as the storm’s centre approached.

In Vinton, west of Lake Charles, police could see several building fires from their station and took calls from residents reporting others at homes and businesses throughout town, Lt. Arthur Phillips said.

“It’s tore up pretty good,” he said. “We’ve taken quite a beating.”

The roof of the town’s recreation centre was completely torn off, and residents reported businesses destroyed by winds and homes damaged by fallen trees, Phillips said.

In Galveston, about 100 miles away from the storm’s eye, a fire erupted in the historic Strand district late last night. Wind-whipped flames leapt across three buildings. City manager Steve LeBlanc said the blaze could have been caused by downed power lines.

“It was like a war zone, shooting fire across the street,” Fire Chief Michael Varela said.

As the storm raged, the torches of oil refineries could be seen burning in the distance from downtown Beaumont. Officials worried about the storm’s threat to those facilities and chemical plants strung along the Texas and Louisiana coast.

The facilities represent a quarter of the US’s oil refining capacity and business analysts said damage from Rita could send petrol prices as high as $4 a gallon. Environmentalists warned of the risk of a toxic spill.

In the days before the storm’s arrival, hundreds of thousands of residents of Texas and Louisiana fled their homes in a mass exodus that produced gridlock and heartbreak.

South of Dallas, a bus of Rita evacuees caught fire in gridlocked traffic, killing as many as 24 nursing home residents who thought they were getting out of harm’s way.

Grocery shelves were emptied, petrol stations ran out of fuel and motorists had to push their cars to the side of highways after idling for hours in stuck traffic and running out of petrol.

Nearly 1,300 patients were airlifted out of an airport near Beaumont late Thursday and early Friday, but only after the county’s top official made a panicked call to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for help.

South-western Louisiana was soaked by driving rain and coastal flooding. Sugarcane fields, ranches and marshlands were under water in coastal Cameron Parish. The sparsely populated region was almost completely evacuated.

President George W. Bush, mindful of criticism the federal government was slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago, planned to visit his home state today. He will go to the state’s emergency operations centre in Austin and then to San Antonio.