Rita Slams Ashore

Hurricane Rita plowed into the Gulf Coast early Saturday, lashing Texas and Louisiana with driving rain, igniting the pre-dawn sky with exploding transformers and threatening to flood the low-lying region.

Rita made landfall at 3:38 a.m. EDT as a Category 3 storm just east of Sabine Pass, on the Texas-Louisiana line, bringing with it a 20-foot storm surge and up to 25 inches of rain, the National Hurricane Center said.

Its 12 mph speed spread worries it would dump nearly 2 feet of rain on flood-prone parts of Texas and Louisiana, spurring tornadoes as it churned north-northwest with winds topping 120 mph.

Texas officials breathed a sigh of relief that Rita spared two flood-prone cities a direct hit. "It looks like the Houston and Galveston area has really lucked out," said Max Mayfield, director of the center.

Rita's strongest winds came ashore along the Texas-Louisiana earlier Saturday, battered the coast with stinging rain and pounding waves that threatened flooding across the low-lying region.

Rita steamed toward refinery towns along the Texas-Louisiana coast with 120 mph winds Friday, creating havoc even before it arrived: Levee breaks caused new flooding in New Orleans, and as many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying nursing-home evacuees caught fire in a traffic jam.

The hurricane was expected to come ashore early Saturday on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston but slam the oil refining towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles, La., with a 20-foot storm surge, towering waves and up to 25 inches of rain.

"That's where people are going to die," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center. "All these areas are just going to get absolutely clobbered by the storm surge."

"We're going to get through this," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. "Be calm, be strong, say a prayer for Texas."

As Rita inched closer to landfall, at least three buildings caught fire in the historic Strand District of Galveston, Texas. At least one of the buildings was engulfed by flames whipped higher by strong winds from the hurricane.

Rita weakened during the day into a Category 3 hurricane after raging as a Category 5, 175-mph monster earlier in the week. But it was still a highly dangerous storm.

Hurricane expert Bryan Norcross of WFOR-TV in Miami said that Rita has picked up speed and is expected to make landfall before sunrise.

"It seems pretty clear that this is going to come very close to the border between Texas and Louisiana," Norcross said. "Bearing in mind it still could veer a little to one side or the other."

CBS News correspondent John Roberts reports that Houston, America's fourth largest city has turned into a ghost town, as well as Port Arthur, Texas, where the

Roberts also reports that nearly a third of the gasoline Americans use every day comes from the area in Rita's path. But as the storm swings away from Houston and weakens a bit, the oil industry was breathing a little easier.

"We've dodged a bullet in a way by having it miss the Houston ship channel," Peter Beutel, an oil industry analyst, told Roberts "We still are going to take some damage, but instead of this being a dagger through the heart of the energy business, this is only going to be a glancing blow."

But Texas' emergency management coordinator, Jack Colley, predicted Rita would destroy nearly 5,700 homes in the state and cause $8.2 billion in damage.

President Bush planned to visit his home state but canceled at the last moment. The White House said he did not want to slow down the storm preparations.

More than 3 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, setting off an unprecedented exodus that brought traffic to a standstill across the Houston metropolitan area. Cars overheated and ran out of gas in 10- and 12-hour traffic jams. Some drivers gave up and turned around and went home.

"It can't get much worse, 100 yards an hour," fumed Willie Bayer, 70. "It's frustrating bumper-to-bumper."

By Friday morning, the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but traffic was still bumper-to-bumper from the outskirts of the city toward Austin and Dallas. The state escorted tanker trucks full of gas to empty stations in small towns along the way. And National Guard trucks delivered gasoline to drivers who ran out.

CBS News correspondent Trish Regan reports that nearly 1,000 people plan to ride out the storm in a make-shift shelter at Sam Houston State University, in Huntsville, Texas. Even though they do not have beds, they were the lucky ones as it and other shelters closed their doors. Regan reports that other families who have run out of gas are

The bus fire took place in a traffic jam on Interstate 45 near Wilmer, southeast of Dallas. CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports that the vehicle was rocked by explosions and engulfed in flames.

Early indications were that the bus it caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said.

Dozens of chemical plants are situated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast in the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries, and damage and disruptions caused by Rita could cause already-rising oil and gasoline prices to go even higher. Also, environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill.

Plants shut down operations, and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants about "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."

At 11 p.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 55 miles southeast of Sabine Pass along the coast at the Texas-Louisiana border, moving northwest at near 13 mph, and forecasters said it could weaken further become coming ashore.

Its hurricane-force winds extended up to 85 miles from the center, and its tropical storm-force winds reached outward 205 miles, meaning Houston and Galveston might not feel Rita's full fury but could still get battered.

The first bands of rain were expected before nightfall Friday. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves and rain of up to 20 inches, with more than 25 inches possible over the next several days as the storm moves inland into Texas and Louisiana and wrings itself out.

Two communities that stood to bear the brunt of the storm were Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 that is home to industries that include oil, shrimping and crawfishing; and Beaumont, a petrochemical, shipbuilding and port city of about 114,000. Beaumont was the site of the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher that gave birth to the modern petroleum industry.

In southwestern Louisiana, up to 500,000 residents along the state's southwest coast were urged to evacuate and state officials planned to send in buses to take refugees.

Rita brought steady rain to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina. The forecast was for 3 to 5 inches in the coming days — dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into recently dry neighborhoods.

Dozens of blocks in the impoverished Ninth Ward were swamped after water poured through the sandbags, soil and gravel used to patch the Industrial Canal levee.

Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 841 Friday, pushing the body count to at least 1,079 across the Gulf Coast. But the company under contract to collect the bodies in the New Orleans area suspended operations until at least Sunday because of the approaching storm.

"Katrina. It's scared everyone," said Dianna Soileau, 29, who was fleeing the refinery town of Texas City with her husband and two children. "We don't want to be the same thing."