THE convoy of fire engines and police cars pulled out at noon, the last vehicles to leave the coastal city of Port Arthur which lay directly in the path of Hurricane Rita.

On board was Tom Peake, angry and anguished. He had just left behind his mother and brother. “I went over to their house and cussed them,” he said. “My mum says, ‘I’m too old and I’m ready to go’. My twin brother Tim said, ‘I am staying with her’. I said I would come and pull their bodies out when it was over.”

He may have to. This industrial town of 56,000, dominated by the burning flares of oil refineries, is expected to be inundated when the monster hurricane thunders ashore this morning, bringing winds of up to 140mph and deluges of biblical proportions. Port Arthur is protected by a 17ft levee, but forecasters were expecting a 25ft storm surge.

The hurricane claimed its first victims long before it made landfall. Twenty-four elderly evacuees from a Houston nursing home were burnt alive in the pre-dawn darkness yesterday when their bus exploded on the interstate to Dallas.

The wreckage blocked one of the principal escape routes from the coast, adding to the chaos of probably the largest evacuation in US history. With more than two million people fleeing northwards the traffic jams lasted for hours. Petrol stations had run dry and people were fighting for fuel.

The stricken city of New Orleans was in deep trouble even before Rita hit land. Its outer edge brought the first significant rains since Hurricane Katrina four weeks ago, and the rising waters swiftly breached the city’s hastily repaired levees in at least three places.

Late yesterday waters from Lake Pontchartrain were pouring into the newly pumped-out city and rising in parts at a rate of three inches a minute. “Our worst fears came true,” said a National Guardsman who had laboured round the clock to rebuild the protective barriers.

The hurricane warning stretched 450 miles along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. Mississippi also declared a state of emergency. Hurricane-force winds extended 85 miles from Rita’s eye, and were expected to last for 16 hours.

The authorities were predicting 6,000 homes destroyed, 16,000 people left homeless and $8 billion (£4.5 billion) of damage, excluding commerce. The National Hurricane Centre said that Rita could dump more than 2ft of rain on Texas and Louisiana, with torrential rain up to 500 miles inland.

“Be calm. Stay strong. Say a prayer for Texas,” Rick Perry, the state’s Governor said.

Kathleen Blanco, his Louisiana counterpart, pleaded with residents of her state’s low-lying coast to get out. She sent an automated telephone message to 400,000 households warning them: “Hurricane Rita is heading your way.”

President Bush was monitoring Rita’s advance from US Northern Command, the military command post inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, that used to watch for Soviet nuclear attacks during the Cold War.

Houston, America’s fourth largest city, was largely abandoned. The port city of Galveston was emptied of all but a brave or foolish few. Offshore oil refineries were shut down.

This time a huge recovery operation is ready, with National Guard, medical units and helicopters on stand-by. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has pre-positioned three days worth of food, water and other supplies for 500,000 people in Louisiana alone.

Back in Port Arthur, Mr Peake’s mother and brother stoically awaited their fate in their modest bungalow. “I can get on the roof if worst comes to worst,” said Tim Peake.

“The last time in 1957, the same thing happened,” said his mother, Pat. “They had us go to a shelter with kids running and screaming. They would not let us home until the hurricane was over. And we found out (it) never even came. I said ‘I am never going to leave again’.”

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