Akala ko petiks pa rin ang buhay.Muntik ko nang makalimutan na ang sento pala ng buhawing Rita ay sa Texas at maraming mawawalan ng kuryente bukas.Kaya tiyak na maraming dadagsang tawag mamaya.Parang nung umatake si Hurricane Katrina, dami rin naming tawag nun.So good luck na lang talaga.
Bakit kaya sunod-sunod ang hurricane sa US ngayon?Kawawa naman 'yung mga Amerikano.Ipagdasal natin na walng gaanong pinsalang idulot ito sa buhay at ari-arian nila.Sana lang dito sa atin, wag nang magkaroon ng super Typhoon o kahit anumang kalamidad kagaya ng mga hurricane sa US.Heto nga pala yung update sa Hurricane Rita from www.cnn.com.
Roads jammed as residents flee Category 5 hurricane.
GALVESTON, Texas (CNN) -- Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing inland snarled traffic on interstates and highways leading out of Houston, Galveston and other cities along the Texas coast as powerful Hurricane Rita churned towards shore.
Forecasters said that the storm had weakened slightly early Thursday, but warned that it was still a Category 5 storm. At 8 a.m. ET Thursday, Rita's maximum sustained winds had dropped to 170 mph (273 kph). The storm was centered about 490 miles (788 kilometers) southeast of Galveston and was moving to the north-northwest at 9 mph (14 kph).
Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas told CNN that about 75 percent to 80 percent of the city's 58, 000 residents had evacuated by Thursday morning. "We hope that whoever is left here... will move on out today," Thomas said. "We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst," President Bush said in Washington.
Galveston was flattened by an infamous hurricane in 1900. Around Houston, interstates and highways carried bumper-to-bumper traffic as residents tried to make their way to safer areas. About 15 patients from a Texas nursing home were being taken to a Houston hospital after they fell unconscious when carbon monoxide came through the vents of the bus evacuating them, a police dispatcher said. Some people leaving Texas cities this week were experiencing their second evacuation in a month, having fled Hurricane Katrina to Texas. "I'm prepared to be gone two weeks or more, and I have medication and everything my kids need to prepare myself for that," said Julia Marshall, who moved to Galveston earlier this year from New Orleans with her five children.
Corpus Christi Mayor Henry Garrett signed mandatory evacuation orders Wednesday for 250,000 people in that Texas coastal city and the rest of Nueces County. Garrett said the 13,000 to 15,000 residents of Padre and Mustang islands and low-lying areas of Corpus Christi must leave their homes by 2 p.m. (3 p.m. ET) Thursday. The rest have until Thursday evening to leave. Garrett said he is ordering the evacuations at least a day earlier than he normally would because of the disaster wrought by Katrina. Although Rita is expected to make landfall early Saturday between Galveston and Corpus Christi, the National Hurricane Center has not ruled out an impact for Louisiana, where post-Katrina recovery efforts are continuing.
The hurricane center said Thursday that Rita could dump as much as three inches of rain in the New Orleans area when it hits Gulf Coast -- a threshold that the Army Corps of Engineers has said may overwhelm that city's fragile levee system. "There is still a risk from New Orleans and eastward of upwards to about three inches of rain, at least that's the current projection," said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the center.
Officials started closing the flood gates around Lake Pontchartrain Thursday morning in preparation for the Rita. More than 1,000 deaths are blamed on Katrina, which struck August 29. A hurricane watch for Rita was in effect for nearly the entire coast of Texas from Port Mansfield, north of Brownsville, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana. The watch means hurricane conditions, including sustained winds of at least 74 mph, are possible within 36 hours. A tropical storm watch was in effect on either side of the hurricane watch area. Hurricane-force winds were extending outward for up to 70 miles from the center, and tropical storm-force winds were extending up to 185 miles.
Several refineries, that process about 3 million barrels of oil each day, could be threatened by Rita. Some energy analysts predict that disruption from the storm could trigger a surge in gas prices. Category 5 storms -- which can generate storm surges higher than 18 feet and can cause catastrophic damage to buildings -- are rare. Only three such monsters have made landfall in the United States in the past 70 years, including Andrew in 1992, Camille in 1969 and the unnamed storm that hit the Florida Keys in 1935.
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Posted: 10:14 a.m. EDT (14:14 GMT)
source: www.cnn.com
