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Hurricane Rita wreaks havoc on Texas Energy City

HOUSTON: Hurricane Rita cut a path of destruction on Saturday through Texas “Energy City” - a major oil refinery and chemical processing town - downing trees and ripping off roofs as it smashed into the US Gulf Coast.

As dawn broke, much of town was cut off by waist-high flood water and downed powerlines, cars lay smashed beneath uprooted trees and the main refinery - a major employer for the town’s 56,000 people - was out of reach. Port Arthur lay almost dead centre in the path of the storm’s swirling eye as it made landfall on the Texas/Louisiana border at 3:39 am, between the major cities of Houston and New Orleans.

But as police and emergency workers assessed the damage across the storm zone, most expressed relief that Rita had not packed the same sort of knockout punch delivered by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, which killed more than 1,000 people throughout the region.

Rita packed maximum winds of 120 miles (195 kilometres) per hour with higher gusts but as it hit the coast it had weakened to a category three hurricane on a scale of five, one down from category-four Katrina.

Later in the morning more than 100 police squad cars were seen re-entering the town, amid warnings from officials that troopers would do everything in their power to stop looting from evacuated homes and stores.

Disaster modelling company AIR Worldwide said insurance losses from Hurricane Rita in parts of Texas and Louisiana would range from 2.5 to five billion dollars. There were no reports of deaths or injuries in Louisiana early on Saturday. afp

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