"This whole summer is more and more reminding me of "The Stand" by Steven King. But it's real."
I was thinking more along the lines of "The Day After Tomorrow" myself.
1 million flee as Rita whirls toward Texas
Hurricane still on track to hit Friday or Saturday
12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, September 22, 2005
By BRUCE NICHOLS / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON – More than 1 million people took to the highways and booked every available room inland, as Hurricane Rita – one of the most powerful storms ever to threaten the state – continued on a collision course with the Texas coastline.
Gas stations were running out of gas as roads filled with outbound traffic Wednesday. Officials estimated more than 1 million people, a fifth of the Houston metro area, were headed for higher ground.
They were heeding warnings and pleas to get out from Gov. Rick Perry and local officials all along the Texas coast, from Brownsville to Beaumont.
Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas warned late Wednesday that her city was nearly out of buses and said those left on the island would have to find a way off or face riding out a storm that is "big enough to destroy part of the island, if not a great part of the county."
Later in the evening, state officials asked officials with the Trinity Railway Express, which operates trains between Dallas and Fort Worth, to run a shuttle train from Galveston to Houston overnight.
"The time to leave is now," Mr. Perry said at an Austin news conference earlier in the day.
Rita was elevated to a Category 5 hurricane, the most destructive class on the Saffir-Simpson scale, early Wednesday afternoon, and experts said it was the third most intense storm recorded in the Atlantic Basin.
The storm was packing 175 mph winds about 570 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi late Wednesday. Landfall was projected late Friday or early Saturday near Matagorda, but officials warned there were no guarantees where it would strike. Tropical storm-force winds extended across 370 miles.
Wherever the storm hits, major damage was expected up and down the coast and as far as 100 miles inland.
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