Rita strengthens to Category 5

To our friends in the gulf area, may G-d look over you at this time of need. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Rita strengthens to Category 5 hurricane: Storm on a course to Texas with wind speeds now up to 165 mph

Chris Matthews just reported it. I fear for our friends in the gulf. This is a category 5. The levee in Galveston, Texas, is 18 feet. A Category 5 causes a storm surge around that level. This will be bad. The water is warmer in the gulf.

Hospital and nursing home patients were evacuated and as many as 1 million other people were ordered to clear out along the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as Hurricane Rita grew to a Category 5, 165-mph monster that could pummel Texas and bring more misery to New Orleans by week’s end.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and one of the most powerful ever to slam into the U.S. mainland.

All of Galveston, vulnerable 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.[...]

The federal government was eager to show it, too, had learned its lesson after being criticized for its sluggish response to Katrina. It rushed hundreds of truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals to the Gulf Coast and put rescue and medical teams on standby.

"You can’t play around with this storm," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on ABC’s Good Morning America. He added: "The lesson is that when the storm hits, the best place to be is to be out of the path of the storm."

At a news conference Wednesday, R. David Paulison, the new acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, laid out the government's preparedness plan. Meals, ice, water, and hospital beds have been set up for those affected by Rita, and helicopters are in place to move emergency teams into position, he said.

Paulison warned Texas residents to get themselves to safety.

"If you don't have a place to go, the state of Texas has shelters in place," he said. "Take care of your home — put your shutters up. Have a plan for your pets."

Paulison diverted questions about how his agency dealt with Katrina and expressed confidence in the country's ability to deal with this Rita.

"Texas has a great emergency management system," he said. "Texas is going to be ready for this storm."[...]

Galveston, situated on an island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of the deadliest natural disaster 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.

Chris Matthews: "I can't remember the time that weather was such a big news issue."

Chris, come to Kentucky. They don't go to school in Trimble County, I hear.