Still under fire over their response to Hurricane Katrina, US authorities ordered the Texas port of Galveston and parts of Houston and Corpus Christi to be emptied. The few people in stricken-New Orleans in Louisiana were also told to get out for the second time in less than four weeks.

After brushing the Florida Keys islands on Tuesday, Rita whipped up winds of about 265 kilometers (165 miles) an hour as it moved toward an expected hit on the Texas coast this weekend.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic choked the road from Galveston to Houston as the exodus got underway. Ambulances, sirens blaring, rushed out hospital patients, families packed their belongings in cars and dozens of school buses ferried those lacking their own means of transport.

The US National Hurricane Center said Rita was "extremely dangerous" and had become a top-level category five storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

The hurricane gathered strength from the warm shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico where about one-quarter of US oil operations are based. BP, Shell and other oil companies evacuated more than 600 oil platforms and rigs.

US authorities said more than 70 percent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut down. Nerves over the new threat to world supplies pushed up crude prices. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, rose 60 cents to close at 66.80 dollars per barrel.

Hurricane Katrina ranked as category four when it slammed ashore near New Orleans on August 29.

The death toll from the storm rose past 1,000 on Wednesday, and many of those who fled at the time are among those having to evacuate again.

Katrina forced Alicia Baxter and her family into the Superdome stadium in New Orleans, then the Astrodome in Houston, and they had arrived last week in Galveston -- a barrier island town of 57,000 where the deadliest US hurricane on record left between 8,000 and 12,000 dead in 1900.

"I'm about to go kill myself," Baxter said as relatives packed up behind her. "This is unbelievable."

Several thousand people in emergency shelters in Houston were also told to leave again.

"Hurricane Rita on its present course poses a risk to Houston and the whole Houston region," the Texas city's mayor, Bill White, said as he told residents to flee flood-prone areas of the city of two million.

Houston's port and NASA's Johnson Space Center closed down due to the threat from Rita. NASA handed control of the International Space Station to counterparts in Russia.

Rita's projected route indicates it would slam ashore 120 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Houston, which would expose the city to the so-called dirty side of the storm, where the eyewall packs the most power.

But forecasts show that a large swath of the Gulf coast, reaching from the northeastern tip of Mexico to southwestern Louisiana, including New Orleans, are at risk.

US authorities are taking no chances this time after the withering criticism over their flawed response to Katrina.

Federal authorities put scores of trucks of water, ice, food supplies, and medicines on standby in Texas. Emergency workers and medical teams have also been alerted.

"Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for New Orleans and Galveston. I urge the citizens to listen carefully to the instructions provided by state and local authorities. And follow them," President George W. Bush said.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm. But we got to be ready for the worst."

Texas Governor Rick Perry also urged coastal residents to head to safer ground.

But Houston's mayor warned there were not enough government vehicles to evacuate everybody from vulnerable areas.

The storm entered the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday after brushing past Cuba and the Florida Keys, drenching Havana and cutting power to more than 24,000 south Florida homes, but leaving no reported casualties.

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