Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle via AP A motorist waits alongside I-45 North under the FM 1488 bridge for the southbound lanes to be opened for northbound traffic yesterday in Houston. Click photo for larger image

By Deborah Hastings
The Associated Press

HOUSTON -- Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only someone would pick up their phone.

Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle via AP Motorists jam I-45 North near Conroe as they attempt to evacuate from Houston yesterday. Click photo for larger image. Related stories Some decide to ride out Huricane Rita Rita raining on hard-hit New Orleans Newspapers in Rita's path turn to Web to update readers Rita may cause gas to hit $4 at pumps Rita brings Houston's big refining industry to standstill 200,000 out of work because of Katrina; Rita promises more economic damage

"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers," she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money."

With Hurricane Rita breathing down Houston's neck, those with cars spent hours stuck in gridlock trying to get out. Some like Skinner -- poor, and with a broken-down car -- were simply stuck, and fuming at being abandoned, they say.

"All the banks are closed and I just got off work," said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or Hispanic, fretted in line. "This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don't have money? Answer me that?"

Some of those who did have money, and did try to get out, didn't get very far.

Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12 hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed toward Oklahoma, which by yesterday was still very far away.

"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," she said. "They say, 'We've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.' Well, you couldn't prove it by me."

In all, nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, a 400-mile-wide storm that weakened yesterday from a top-of-the-scale Category 5 hurricane to a Category 4 as it swirled across the Gulf of Mexico.

Last night the storm took a sharper-than-expected turn to the right, which could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit. The could draw the hurricane toward Port Arthur, Texas, or Lake Charles, La., at least 60 miles up the coast, by late tonight or early tomorrow.

Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle via AP A state trooper tries to calm people under the FM1488 bridge as they wait for the contraflow lanes to be opened yesterday in Houston. Click photo for larger image.

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 chemical plants and petroleum 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 8 p.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 350 miles east-southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 10 mph. Its winds were near 145 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 evacuation was a traffic nightmare, with red brakelights streaming out of Houston and its low-lying suburbs as far as the eye could see. Highways leading inland out of Houston, a metropolitan area of 4 million people about an hour's drive from the shore, were clogged for up to 100 miles north of the city.

Rick Bowmer, Associated Press Storm evacuees arrive yesterday at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Baytown, Texas. Thousands of Texas coastal residents are trying to find a way north as Hurricane Rita approaches. Click photo for larger image.

Drivers ran out of gas in 14-hour traffic jams or looked in vain for a place to stay as hotels filled up all the way to the Oklahoma and Arkansas line. Others got tired of waiting in traffic and turned around and went home.

State officials hoped to transport more than 200,000 gallons of gas to service stations that reported running out of fuel. Police officers and National Guard trucks carried gas to motorists whose tanks were on empty.

To speed the evacuation, the governor halted all southbound traffic into Houston along I-45 and took the unprecedented step of opening all eight lanes to northbound traffic out of the city for 125 miles. I-45 is the primary evacuation route north from Houston and Galveston. By late last night, the traffic bottlenecks were improving, with congestion easing on many major arteries leaving Houston, said Robert Black, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry.

Despite the improvement in traffic congestion, some people still had no way to get out of town. On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. "I'd like to go, but nobody come get me," the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. "No se, no se," she said: Spanish for "I don't know."

Her daughter, who appeared to be about 9, whispered in English, "We're from Mexico."

Erich Schlegel, The Dallas Morning News via AP Mario Williams, 15, holds his sisters, DeShonna and Dazyre, as a carload of eight family members from Baytown, Texas, waits in a gas station yesterday for fuel to make the trip from Houston to Victoria, Texas, to escape Hurricane Rita. Click photo for larger image.

For the poor and the disenfranchised, the mighty evacuation orders that preceded Rita were something they could only ignore.

Eddie McKinney, 64, who had no home, no teeth and a torn shirt, stood outside the EZ Pawn shop, drinking a beer under a sign that said, "No Loitering."

"We got no other choice but to stay here. We're homeless and we're broke," he said. "I thought about going to Dallas, but now it's too late. I got no way to get there."

Where will he stay?

"A nice white man gave me a motel room for three days. Just walked up and said, 'Here.' So my buddy and me will stick it out," he said, pointing to another homeless man. "We got a half-gallon of whiskey and a room."

In Deer Park, a working-class suburb of refineries south of Houston, Stacy and Troy Curtis, waited for help outside the police station. Less than three weeks ago, the couple left New Orleans after it was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

With no vehicle, and little money, they tried to get their lives together while staying at a hotel in Deer Park. Stacy Curtis, a nursing assistant in New Orleans, had a job interview scheduled for yesterday.

Edward A. Ornelas, San Antonio Express-News via AP Willie and Birdie Milligan wait with other residents aboard a bus to travel from Beaumount to Lufkin or Nacogdoches, Texas, yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

But most businesses had shut down because the neighborhood will likely flood if the hurricane hits Galveston Bay. The streets were empty yesterday afternoon.

"We're stuck here," Stacy Curtis said. "Got no other place to go."

An emergency official eventually sent a van to take the couple to a shelter at a recreation center.

Monica Holmes, who has debilitating lupus, sat in her car at a Houston gas station that had no gas. "We can't go nowhere," she said, tapping a fingernail against the dashboard fuel gauge. "Look here," she said. "I'm right on E."

Her husband, a security guard, had a paycheck, but no way to cash it.

"We were going to try to go to Nacogdoches" in east Texas, not far from the Louisiana border, she said. "But even if we could get on the road, we're not going to get out. These people that left yesterday, they're still on the beltway. They haven't even got out of Houston."

So she and her husband will hunker down in their Missouri City home, just to the south. "We'll be fine," she said. "You can't be scared of what God can do. I'm covered."

Erich Schlegel, The Dallas Morning News via AP Walter Hirka, of Katy, Texas, trying to get back home after taking care of last minute business in Houston, waits with thousands of people stuck in traffic trying to flee the path of Hurricane Rita yesterday in Houston. Click photo for larger image.

As always, there were those who chose to stay, no matter how dire the warnings.

John Benson, a 47-year-old surfer and lifelong Galveston resident, said he thinks his town "is going to take on a lot of water. But as far as the winds, I think here on the island, it will be a little bit less than they anticipated."

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued Wednesday for the area.

Benson said he planned to use his surfboard as transportation after the hurricane. "The main thing is you have a contingency plan," he said, and thumped his board. "You got buoyancy."

Skinner, accompanied by her 6-year-old grandson, Dageneral Bellard, would settle for a bus.

"They got them for the outlying areas, for the Gulf and Galveston, but they ain't made no preparations for us in the city, for the poor people here. There ain't no (evacuation) buses here. I got nowhere to go."

Tom Reel, San Antonio Express-News via AP Tamara and Stephen Johnson try to pass the time reading at Windsor Park Mall in San Antonio yesterday after evacuating from the Galveston area on Wednesday. The couple originally fled with a group of friends, but when their truck broke just 30 minutes into the trip, they were forced to hitchhike the rest of the way. After 12 hours of hitchhiking, and three separate rides, they arrived in San Antonio only to discover Stephen Johnson had grabbed the wrong bag from the shared truck. He left behind all his identification. The bag he did take was full of Nintendo games. Click photo for larger image