Chan's Personal Blog

Hospitals and nursing homes were evacuated and more than 1.3 million along the Gulf Coast were ordered out Wednesday as hurricane Rita turned into a 265 km/h monster that could pound Texas and bring more damage and heartache to New Orleans.

Forecasters predict Rita could come ashore Saturday along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi.

With its huge size -- storm-force winds extending 565 kilometres across -- practically the entire western end of the Gulf Coast was in peril, and even a slight right turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.

Rita strengthened into a category 5 storm on Wednesday afternoon. Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and one of the most powerful to slam into the U.S. mainland.

All of Galveston, vulnerable sections of Houston and Corpus Christi and the damaged New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders, one day after Rita caused minor damage when it sideswiped the Florida Keys as a much weaker storm.

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Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would smash into key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 per cent of the nation's total oil production.

Twin nuclear electricity-generating reactors at the South Texas Project on the Gulf Coast near Bay City are expected to be in the path of Rita and will shut down seven hours before the storm hits land.

Category Five Hurricane: winds greater than 249 km/h

Storm surge generally greater than 5.5 metres above normal. Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. All shrubs, trees, and signs blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Severe and extensive window and door damage. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the hurricane.

Major damage to lower floors of all structures located less than 4.5 metres above sea level and within 500 yards of the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas on low ground within 8-16 km of the shoreline may be required.

Hundreds of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.

US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.

Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.

And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.

One British aid worker last night called the move "sickening senselessness" and said furious colleagues were "spitting blood".

The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.

Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.

The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US.

But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.

The aid worker, who would not be named, said: "This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.

"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."

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Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption.

And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit.