NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Rita slashed past the Florida Keys and swelled in strength Tuesday as it treaded into the Gulf of Mexico with 115-mph winds. Weather forecasters warned that the storm could approach the ferocious Category 4 intensity of Hurricane Katrina, prompting massive preparations by jittery officials and residents from flood-numbed New Orleans to the Texas coastline.
The gathering storm sideswiped the Keys and Florida's southern peninsula, spawning waterspouts and funnel clouds, and leaving much of Key West and other populated areas with slight damage. The National Weather Service said early today that the storm had reached Category 3 strength and was expected to become a Category 4 hurricane before landfall late Friday or Saturday. A Category 4 hurricane has winds from 131 to 155 mph.
Centered about 145 miles west of Key West early today, the storm's projected path would direct it through the Gulf of Mexico toward the Texas coast, near the major oil-refining and port city of Galveston, where 57,000 residents were ordered to evacuate this morning. Weather Service experts said there was only a remote chance that Rita would repeat Katrina's devastating assault on New Orleans, but authorities were concerned that steady rains might overwhelm weakened levees and re-flood the broken city's low-lying areas.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco asked President Bush on Tuesday to declare a federal emergency in her state again. "We learned the lessons of Katrina," Blanco said, urging residents to make preparations. "We will take all precautions necessary to save lives."
The move came several hours after Bush, along with Blanco, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and federal and military emergency officials, toured New Orleans and was briefed on Rita's ominous progress. Told that Rita would intensify at least to a Category 3 storm, Bush said officials "all up and down this coastline" were readying for "yet another significant storm."
Army Corps of Engineers officials were preparing to wedge massive steel barriers over New Orleans' fragile dikes to counter a feared new round of flooding. Authorities said a heavy rain would almost certainly submerge low-lying neighborhoods such as the 9th Ward, but they raised hopes that the newly reinforced levees would protect much of the rest of the city.
Nagin said he would reassert a mandatory evacuation order for New Orleans two days after he had called on residents and merchants to return to the city's most habitable sections after much of the floodwater had finally ebbed.
