Hurricane Rita upgraded to Category 5 storm
CTV.ca News Staff
Bearing down on the U.S. Gulf Coast, Rita has intensified to the top of the hurricane scale. Packing maximum sustained winds of 265 km/h, the massive storm is now rated as a Category 5.
The storm's status was upgraded by the U.S. National Hurricane Center on Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, with the potentially deadly hurricane tracking across the Gulf of Mexico, residents of New Orleans and several Texas cities were placed under mandatory evacuation orders. The order extends to about 1.3 million people in the two states.
Houston Mayor Bill White called for residents in low-lying areas of his city to "begin making their evacuation plans" ahead of Rita's arrival.
Without enough government vehicles to evacuate everyone in the affected areas, White urged friends and neighbours to help each other out.
"We need the citizens who are the first line of defence to do your job and actively look for those who need assistance," he told reporters.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered for New Orleans and the Texan county of Galveston and Corpus Christi shortly after Rita was upgraded to a Category 4 storm -- the same intensity as Hurricane Katrina when it devastated the Gulf Coast last month.
At a briefing in Washington, acting U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency director David Paulison underscored the seriousness of all the warnings.
"I strongly, strongly urge Gulf Coast residents to pay close attention to this storm. It's already a Category 4, a huge storm, it's in warm waters and there's a potential for it to increase more," the acting FEMA chief told reporters.
"You have to be prepared to take care of your families," he warned.
Meteorologists fear that Rita could grow even more intense as it travels across the warm waters of the gulf. FEMA, Paulison added, is making an "extraordinary effort" to coordinate preparations for Rita's anticipated landfall.
"We are comfortable that Texas is going to be ready for this storm. It's a big storm, it's not going to be fun, but we're comfortable that we're doing all that we can do take care of residents," he said.
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I dont think I would want to ride this out.
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