Rita may cause tens of billions in damage

Evacuees with special medical needs load their luggage on buses at George R. Brown Convention Centre before hurricane Rita in Houston, Texas Thursday. Over one million people clogged highways and piled into buses in a traffic snarling exodus as Hurricane Rita ripped towards oil industry citadel Houston and threatened a dangerous glancing blow for storm-ravaged New Orleans. PHOTO: AFP

study performed last year by the engineering firm Dodson & Associates found that a Category 5 storm could inundate 369 square miles of Harris County, which contains Houston and some of its suburbs. The study estimated the total cost of a worst-case storm at $80 billion, with 75 percent due to flooding and the rest from wind damage.

"You're looking at the southeast quadrant of the city of Houston, from downtown to Galveston Bay, being underwater," said Chris Johnson, president of Dodson & Associates.

That area is home to about 700,000 people, 15 percent of the metro population. It includes the Johnson Space Centre, which sits about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston in a low-lying area threaded by bayous. Nasa evacuated the space centre Wednesday, shifting ground control over the International Space Station to a Russian space agency facility outside Moscow.

Also subject to flooding are Texas City and other centres of chemical production and petroleum refining. As they did before Hurricane Katrina, environmentalists worry that Rita could cause the release of toxic pollutants at one or more of the 87 chemical plants, oil refineries or petroleum storage facilities along the Texas coast.

"Dozens of chemical plants and petroleum facilities lie in Hurricane Rita's path, many of which may not be adequately prepared to prevent toxic releases," said Tom Natan, research director of the National Environmental Trust.

In Galveston, Texas, where the deadliest hurricane in US history killed up to 8,000 people in 1900, flooding is a virtual inevitability.

"Galveston is going to suffer," city manager Steven LeBlanc said at a news conference Thursday.

The city is protected by a 16-foot seawall specifically designed to block incoming storm surges. But some forecasters said Rita could pound the barrier with waves twice that high.