Rita turns farther from Houston

Hurricane Rita weakened this morning from a top-of-the-scale Category 5 hurricane to a Category 4 as it swirled across the Gulf of Mexico, and forecasters said it could lose more steam by the time it comes ashore late Friday or early Saturday.

And in the afternoon, Rita made a sharper-than-expected turn to the right, and it appeared that Houston and nearby Galveston might escape a direct hit. Instead, it looked as if Rita might come ashore near Port Arthur or Lake Charles, La., at least 60 miles up the coast.

But it was still an extremely dangerous storm — and one aimed at a section of coastline with the nation’s biggest concentration of oil refineries. Environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill from the 87 industrial plants and storage installations that represent more than one-fourth of U.S. refining capacity.

Rita also brought rain to already-battered New Orleans, raising fears that the city’s Katrina-damaged levees would fail and flood the city all over again.

At 4 p.m. CDT, Rita was centered about 405 miles southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 9 mph. Its winds were near 140 mph, down from 175 mph earlier in the day. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore somewhere along a 350-mile stretch of the Texas and Louisiana coast that includes Port Arthur near the midpoint.

Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves, and rain of up to 15 inches along the Texas and western Louisiana coast.

The U.S. mainland has not been hit by two Category 4 storms in the same year since 1915. Katrina came ashore Aug. 29 as a Category 4.

An estimated 1.3 million people in Galveston, the Corpus Christi area, Beaumont, low-lying parts of Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders. And about 500,000 in southwestern Louisiana were told to get out as well.

Oil refineries and chemical plants in and around Houston began shutting down, and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs.

The Texas governor recalled Texas National Guardsmen and other emergency personnel and equipment from Louisiana to get ready for Rita.

Environmentalists warned that the stretch of coast threatened by Rita is home to 87 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage installations, raising the possibility that the storm could cause a major oil spill or toxic release. Southeast Texas is also home to more than a dozen active Superfund sites.

NASA evacuated Johnson Space Center and transferred control of the international space station to the Russians. Storm surge projections put most of the NASA space center, situated about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston, under water in the event of a hurricane above Category 2.

The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.

In New Orleans, Rita’s steady rains today were the first measurable precipitation since Katrina. The forecast was for three to five inches in the coming days — dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into neighborhoods that have been dry for less than a week.

“Right now, it’s a wait-and-see and hope-for-the-best,” said Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which added sandbags to shore up levees and installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city’s canals to protect against storm surges.

But as the rain fell, there were ominous signs it might not be enough. In the city’s lower Ninth Ward, where water broke through a levee earlier this month and caused some of the worst flooding, there was standing water a foot deep in areas that were dry a day earlier.

Katrina’s death toll in Louisiana rose to 832 today, pushing the body count to at least 1,069 across the Gulf Coast. But workers under contract to the state to collect the bodies were taken off the streets of New Orleans because of the approaching storm.

Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would destroy key oil installations in Texas and the Gulf or otherwise disrupt production. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation’s total oil output.

Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.