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hurricane rita has swept ashore along the texas-louisiana coastline, bringing stinging rain and pounding waves that threaten flooding across the low-lying region.
the eyewall - the ring of 120 mph winds surrounding rita's calm eye - lashed the coastal area between sabine pass, texas, and cameron, louisiana, before the national hurricane center officially announced it had made landfall at 8.30am.
the hurricane's eye is expected to take a course that could spare houston and galveston but slam the oil refining towns of beaumont and port arthur, texas, and lake charles, louisiana, with a 20ft 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.''
the storm had already 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 on friday.
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.
rita threatened dozens of shuttered refineries and chemical plants along the texas and louisiana gulf coast that represent a quarter of the nation's oil refining capacity.
environmentalists warned of the risk of a toxic spill, and business analysts said rita could cause already-high petrol prices to rise again.
in the storm's cross-hairs were the marshy towns along the louisiana line: port arthur, a city of about 58,000 where the main industries include oil, shrimping and crawfishing; and beaumont, a port city of about 114,000 that was the birthplace of the modern oil industry.
in new orleans, which had just drained nearly all the putrid floodwaters from katrina, rita's wind and rain sent water gushing through a patched levee along the industrial canal and into the already-devastated lower ninth ward and parts of neighbouring st bernard parish. the water rose to waist level.
about the same time, water streamed through another levee along the patched london avenue canal, swamping homes in the gentilly neighbourhood with more than six inches of water.
president bush, mindful of criticism the federal government was slow to respond to katrina, had planned to visit his home state to review the rita response but cancelled at the last minute to avoid slowing down the preparations.
at least 2.8 million people fled a 500-mile stretch of the louisiana-texas coastline in a seemingly all-at-once evacuation that caused monumental traffic jams in which hundreds of cars broke down or ran out of petrol.
