Hurricane Rita grew into a monster yesterday with sustained winds of 274-kph recorded as it swirled across the Gulf of Mexico, prompting more than 1.3 million residents of Texas and Louisiana to flee in hopes of avoiding a deadly repeat of Katrina.

Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would destroy key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas, the heart of US crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output.

As Texas Governor Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating well in advance of Rita's predicted Saturday landfall, New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.

"Between Katrina and our preparations for this, people understand this isn't something you're going to play around with," Perry told CNN.

Galveston, Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County, low-lying parts of Houston, and New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Category 5 Rita drew energy from balmy gulf waters.

Forecasters said Rita could be the strongest hurricane on record ever to hit Texas. Only three Category 5 hurricanes, the highest on the scale, are known to have hit the US mainland - most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

At 8 AM EDT (12:00 GMT) yesterday, Rita was centered about 790 kilometers east-southeast of Galveston and was moving west-northwest near 15 kph.

Wind speed was 274 kph, down slightly from 282 kph earlier in the day. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 115 kilometers from the center of the storm, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.

Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since records began in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933.

(China Daily September 23, 2005)