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Drew also said that extra-curricular activities and adult education classes at Broward schools would be closed Monday and Tuesday.

Broward County identified three schools as hurricane shelters for Monday night: Monarch High in Coconut Creek, Fox Trail Elementary in Davie and Watkins Elementary in Pembroke Park.

For more information, people can call the Broward school district's information hotline at 754-321-0321 or visit its Web site at www.browardschools.com.

The Keys and Miami-Dade County were under a hurricane warning, meaning hurricane-force winds were expected by Tuesday morning, and Broward County was under a tropical storm warning and hurricane watch. Palm Beach County was under a tropical storm warning.

In southwest Florida, the Gulf coast from Cape Sable north to Chokoloskee was under a hurricane watch, and a tropical storm watch was issued for Chokoloskee north to Englewood.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Monday that the storm's eye is predicted to remain over the water between the Keys and Cuba, but even a slight deviation to the north could bring it over the islands and closer to mainland Florida.

``Right now the biggest concern is the Keys,'' Mayfield said.

The mandatory evacuation from the Seven-Mile-Bridge south to Key West covers 40,000 residents as the weather began deteriorating as the first rain bands approached. Shelters in Key West will not open, officials said, because they want people to evacuate further north.

Shelters have been opened at the Stanley Switlik Elementary School in Marathon, at Coral Shores High in Islamorada, and at Florida International University in Miami.

"The National Hurricane Center is telling us that there is some risk that Rita might reach Category 3 status as it approaches the Keys," explained Irene Toner, Monroe's emergency management director. "Our policy is to call for a general evacuation in areas that might be prone to Category 3 impacts."

A mandatory evacuation order continues for nonresidents and visitors in the Upper and Middle Keys. A mandatory evacuation order in the Upper and Middle Keys has also been issued for those residents in mobile homes, areas at risk to storm-surge flooding, other specified risk areas as well as boat live-aboards.

In the Bahamas, which could be struck by Rita first, few on Mayaguana Island bothered to board their windows or stock up on emergency supplies as they normally would for a hurricane, said Earnel Brown, manager of the Baycaner Beach Resort.

``I don't expect that much trouble,'' Brown said. ``I don't think we're going to have that much damage from it.''

Cuba had activated its civil defense program, issuing bulletins about the storm's progress over state-run radio.

Six provinces along the island's north were on cyclone alert and local leaders as well as average citizens were being instructed to monitor the storm's progress and obey any forthcoming instructions from civil defense officials.

In Key West, the streets were quiet Monday morning as Mike Pettengill, 54, packed his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. A resident of Stuart, he hoped to beat the rain and traffic heading north and wanted to be able to find gas before stations close or run dry.

``We walked by a bar (Sunday) and heard there was an evacuation. We were totally shocked. I couldn't believe it. Where did it come from?'' he said.

Kelly Friend and two workers were boarding up her store in Key West, Audio Video in Paradise Inc., and painted a message on the plywood: ``Hey bartender 1 Rita on the rocks to go!''

``Not that we're afraid of the hurricane, but we want to protect our investment,'' Friend said. ``Plus it gives us an excuse to take a day off and drink.''

Rita, which strengthened Sunday into a tropical storm, had sustained winds of 60 mph and was forecast to be in the Straits of Florida between the Keys and northern Cuba on Monday, possibly as a Category 1 hurricane with winds of at least 74 mph, forecasters said.

Evacuation Turns Deadly as Storm Advances

HOUSTON (Sept. 23, 2005) - Hurricane Rita roared toward the Texas and Louisiana coast with 135 mph winds Friday, creating monumental traffic jams along evacuation routes and raising fears of a crippling blow to the nation's oil-refining industry.

The storm was expected to come ashore early Saturday along the upper Texas-Louisiana coast on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston a direct hit. But Rita could plow into the oil and chemical centers of Beaumont and Port Arthur, about 75 miles east of Houston.

Also Friday, as many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying elderly evacuees caught fire.

In rainy New Orleans, water poured over a patched levee, gushing into the city's hard-hit but largely empty Ninth Ward and heightening fears that Rita would flood the devastated city all over again.

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"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard. "We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly."

By Friday morning, the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but traffic was still bumper-to-bumper from the outskirts of the city toward Austin and Dallas. The state escorted tanker trucks full of gas to empty stations in small towns along the way.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, the chief executive for the county surrounding Houston, told residents who had not left yet to stay where they were for the storm.

The bus fire took place in a traffic jam on Interstate 45 near Wilmer, southeast of Dallas. The vehicle was rocked by explosions and engulfed in flames that reduced it to a blackened, burned-out shell.

Early indications were that the bus it caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said.

Nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, setting off an unprecedented exodus that brought traffic to a standstill across the Houston metropolitan area. Cars overheated and ran out of gas in 10- and 12-hour traffic jams. Some drivers gave up and turned around and went home.

"It can't get much worse, 100 yards an hour," fumed Willie Bayer, 70. "It's frustrating bumper-to-bumper."

Scores of petrochemical plants are situated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast in the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries, and damage and disruptions caused by Rita could cause already-rising oil and gasoline prices to go even higher. Also, environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill.

Plants shut down operations, and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants about "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."

At 11 a.m. EDT, Rita was about 210 miles southeast of Port Arthur, moving northwest near 10 mph. Its winds had weakened to near 135 mph -- down from 175 mph on Thursday. That meant Rita was on the border between a Category 3 and a Category 4 storm.

Its hurricane-force winds extended up to 85 miles from the center, and its tropical storm-force winds reached outward 205 miles, meaning Houston and Galveston might not feel Rita's full fury but could still get battered.

Two communities that stood to bear the brunt of the storm were Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 that is home to industries that include oil, shrimping and crawfishing; and Beaumont, a petrochemical, shipbuilding and port city of about 114,000. Beaumont was the site of the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher that gave birth to the modern petroleum industry.

The first bands of rain were expected before nightfall Friday. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves and rain of up to 20 inches, with more than 25 inches possible over the next several days as the storm moves inland into Texas and Louisiana and wrings itself out.

Texas officials scrambled to reroute several inbound highways to accommodate outbound traffic, but many people were waiting so long they ran out of gas and were forced to park.

"We know you're out there," Houston Mayor Bill White said of the congestion that extended well into Louisiana. "We understand there's been fuel shortages."

Texas Army National Guard trucks were escorted by police to directly provide motorists with gasoline. The state was also working to get more than 200,000 gallons of gas to fuel-starved stations in the Houston area.

By late Thursday night, the traffic was at least moving slowly, but was still backed up for about 100 miles in what White called "one of the largest mass evacuations in American history."

Rita brought steady rain to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina. 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.

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. Guidry of the National Guard said water was rising about three inches a minute.

The impoverished neighborhood was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina's floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before Hurricane Rita struck.

Sally Forman, an aide to Mayor Ray Nagin, said officials knew the levees were compromised, but they believe that the Ninth Ward is cleared of residents.

"I wouldn't imagine there's one person down there," Forman said.

The usually bustling tourist island of Galveston -- rebuilt after as many as 12,000 people died in a 1900 hurricane that is still the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history -- 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.

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.

Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 841 Friday, pushing the body count to at least 1,078 across the Gulf Coast. But the company under contract to collect the bodies in the New Orleans area suspended operations until at least Sunday because of the approaching storm.

In southwestern Louisiana, up to 500,000 residents along the state's southwest coast were urged to evacuate and state officials planned to send in buses to take refugees.

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.

"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."

Associated Press writers Pam Easton in Galveston and Liz Austin in Austin contributed to this report.

9/23/2005 11:57:14

Hurricane Slams Into Gulf Coast; Flooding Begins

BEAUMONT, Tex., - Hurricane Rita, with an eye 20 miles wide and wind gusts of almost 150 miles per hour, slammed into the Gulf Coast before dawn on Saturday, causing far less damage than officials had feared but raising new concerns as its torrential rain and storm surges caused widespread flooding across much of the region

By late Saturday, only one death had been attributed to the storm or its remnants; one person was killed in Mississippi when a tornado hit a mobile home, The Associated Press reported. On Friday, 24 residents of a living center for the elderly died when the bus in which they were being evacuated caught fire.

Officials said the storm was less deadly than Hurricane Katrina partly because of the evacuation of millions of Gulf Coast residents who had transportation away from the area and heeded warnings, mindful of the flooding, death and destruction of nearly a month ago.

Through the day as the storm moved northward, every eye was on the rising waters. In Terrebonne Parish and Houma, south winds shoved water from the Gulf of Mexico through the low-lying lands, topping levees designed for storm drainage but unequipped for hurricane protection.

The high water left 15,000 residents vulnerable over an area of 820 square miles, said Don Schwab, president of Terrebonne Parish.

More than 650 evacuees had been placed in three local shelters by early Saturday evening, with the number expected to rise significantly, Mr. Schwab said. Water rose four to five feet in the lowest areas, he said, but some evacuees said it had risen even higher.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Saturday night that the storm appeared to be moving inland more quickly than had been expected. Heavy rains were still expected in its path, but forecasters had warned that the storm could stall over the Gulf Coast region, causing rainfall of up to 25 inches over days.

In Jefferson Parish, helicopters and boats from the Navy and the Coast Guard rescued about 500 people who were stranded in their homes around Lafitte, La., about 30 miles south of New Orleans, state officials said.

It was the largest search-and-rescue mission that had occurred so far in Louisiana in response to Hurricane Rita. Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, a Louisiana National Guard spokesman, said soldiers were "heavily engaged" in missions in Vermilion Parish and were trying to make their way to parishes farther west.

"We still are unable to perform evacuation, search-and-rescue missions in those areas due to the high winds," Colonel Schneider said.

Across Louisiana, nearly 18,000 people were in shelters. And power was out to more than 1.2 million customers in Texas and Louisiana.

Houston, where 2.5 million residents choked roadways for hours as they fled the approach of the storm, appeared to have been spared major damage. But Mayor Bill White and Gov. Rick Perry pleaded with residents not to return home yet, saying it was still unsafe to do so because of rain and high winds.

Worried that a rush home would result in another nightmarish traffic jam, the Texas Department of Transportation released an unusual plan that calls for people in various sectors in and around Houston to return on different days. Those from the northwest part of the city and from communities to the Northwest were told return Sunday. Those from the southwest are supposed to return Monday, and those just from a small part of the area to the northeast are supposed to return Tuesday.

Hurricane Rita made landfall about 3:40 a.m. Eastern time as a Category 3 storm, which carries winds up to 130 m.p.h., with its eye passing just east of Sabine Pass, Tex., near the Texas-Louisiana border. After hitting land, the storm weakened to a Category 2 and later was downgraded to a tropical storm, which has winds of less than 75 m.p.h.

President Bush, who was criticized for his administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, monitored Hurricane Rita from the United States Northern Command in Colorado Springs and other emergency command centers.

James Gunter, the fire chief in Jasper, Tex., about 70 miles north of the coast, said in a interview with KHOU-TV early in the morning: "We've had fires in the county that we have not been able to respond to - won't be able to respond to, period. The entire county is without power."

Chief Gunter added, "We can go out on the south side of our building and we can look to the south and we can see nothing less than utter devastation."

Early Saturday, water levels were receding in the upper and middle portions of Galveston Bay as strong winds were pushing the water southward, causing it to pile up across bayside locations of Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula. Forecasters said the flooding farther west along Galveston Island, on the north-facing bay shores, was expected to subside by midday.

In New Orleans, water that topped two repaired canal levees in the Ninth Ward on Friday because of rain and wind as Hurricane Rita approached began to recede somewhat on Saturday.

"We just have to get clearance with Mother Nature," said Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the corps.

The worst damage from Hurricane Rita appeared to be in southwestern Louisiana and East Texas. But the storm also sparked fires in Galveston and Houston. In Lake Charles, La., early unconfirmed reports told of heavy damage to the glass facade of the Hibernia Bank tower downtown, potential damage to casino barges on Lake Charles, and a fallen overpass on either Interstate 10 or Interstate 210, a spur to the south of town.

Parts of Beaumont were flooded, and there were indications that water had been swept around Port Arthur's horseshoe-shape seawall. One resident of Orange, a town just to the northeast, called the courthouse to say she was climbing into her attic to escape rising water.

Glass blew out of the J.P. Morgan/Chase Tower in downtown Houston, forcing the police to cordon off the area.

In coastal counties and parishes, crews of workers rose in the dark early Saturday and prepared to go out at first light to assess the damage, while inland Texas counties like Jasper were still under siege by the storm.

"We're in the process of going through the eye right now, so we've got a lot of rough times ahead," Diane Brown, the acting Jasper County Jail administrator, said after answering the telephone at the Sheriff's Office early Saturday morning.

In Louisiana, officials from Cameron and Calcasieu Parishes huddled in the Calcasieu Parish Jail, which had been evacuated of all 1,149 inmates before the storm. About 3 a.m. Saturday, wind was rattling the roof and the windows. "That's the sound of our lives changing forever," said Mike Aymond, a Calcasieu sheriff's deputy.

But, Deputy Aymond said: "It'd be a lot worse if New Orleans hadn't happened. People would have stayed."

Initial estimates by insurance experts put the damage from Hurricane Rita at $5 billion or less, far below the estimated $35 billion in damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina nearly a month ago and the $30 billion that had been feared had Galveston and Houston taken a direct hit.

"The areas of Texas and Louisiana where this came ashore was far less developed than the coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi where Katrina struck," said Robert P. Hartwig, the chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New York. Hurricane Rita also struck with less force.

In Jefferson County, Tex., which includes Beaumont and Port Arthur, Carl Griffith, the county judge, estimated that only 10 percent to 15 percent of the county's 250,000 residents had stayed behind, compared with 40 percent in previous evacuations. In Cameron Parish, a low-lying area of bayous, farmland and fishing camps just south of Lake Charles, nearly all of the 9,000 residents had evacuated by late Friday. About 95 percent of the 200,000 residents in Calcasieu Parish, which includes Lake Charles, had evacuated, officials estimated.

In Beaumont, windows blew out of the ground floor of the Entergy building, which the county was using as a shelter and staging area for first responders, causing a drop in pressure throughout the building, the tallest in downtown. As the first rescue workers left, the wind continued to shake cars and drive horizontal sheets of rain.

The Houston police had confirmed 28 burglaries overnight and arrested 16 people, said Frank Michel, a spokesman for Mayor White. Eight of those arrested, four juveniles, three women and one man, were accused of looting a Target store. Three were arrested at a business on the city's southwest side, and one person was caught stealing beer from a convenience store, the police said.

Residents who had not evacuated were warned by the National Hurricane Center to remain in place until Hurricane Rita moved farther inland, because traveling, especially in cars, would be dangerous. In most evacuated areas, officials said it was not safe to return, except in Friendswood, Tex., a suburb of Houston.

On Saturday, Army helicopter crews from the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., began flying Federal Emergency Management Agency teams whose job it was to gauge damage from the hurricane.

"The air crews are facilitating the movement of personnel to conduct assessments of the conditions in anticipation of the relief effort," said Maj. Greg Thompson, the First Air Cavalry Brigade executive officer. The military also sent five mortuary teams from New Orleans to Fort Sam Houston, Tex., and five other teams were placed on alert, according to a statement from the Northern Command, which manages the Pentagon's efforts in domestic emergency and relief missions. Those teams help recover and transport the dead.

By early Saturday, more than 50 helicopters, as well as other surveillance and transport planes, were available for damage assessment and search-and-rescue missions, according to a Northern Command statement.

~~~~~~

Relief as Rita spares lives, refineries

OPHELIA HITS NORTH CAROLINA AFTER SPARING FLORIDA
Lots of rain but no deaths reported due to the storm.

updated 10-5-05 - HURRICANE SEASON OF 2005 - PAGE 2
KATRINA HITS NEW ORLEANS
SEE HOW TO HELP ON THIS PAGE
100's  DEAD IN THE SOUTH
PEOPLE DID NOT OBEY THE EVACUATION ORDER!!
NEW ORLEANS WATER CONTINUING TO RISE

updated 8-11-05 - HURRICANE SEASON of 2005-PAGE 1
DENNIS MAKES LANDFALL - 
10 dead in Cuba - 15 Dead in Haiti
EMILY HEADED TOWARDS JAMAICA
1 DEAD IN GRENADA
4 die in JAMAICA
2 DIE IN HELICOPTER CRASH IN GULF OF MEXICO
TOURISTS IN CANCUN BEING EVACUATED TO HIGHER GROUND
MEXICO EVACUATING COASTLINES
EMILY HITTING MEXICO AND TEXAS