Texans not playing with Hurricane Rita

Just as residents in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are beginning to rebuild their lives or find homes due to displacement by Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita now poses an immediate threat to southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana and all points in between.
Rita, downgraded from Category 5 to 4, is now the third most intense hurricane in the Atlantic Basin, according to the National Weather Service, and could be the most intense to hit Texas and Louisiana soil.
Projected landfall for the storm is possibly early Saturday along the Texas and Louisiana coastline, prompting mandatory evacuations.
Evacuees from New Orleans, located in Houston and Lake Charles, were moved Wednesday to other locations such as Huntsville and parts of Arkansas.
“I feel nervous about this storm,” said Valecia Tizeno, an assistant district attorney in Port Arthur, Texas. “I feel more passionately for those from New Orleans because now I know how they felt.”
Tizeno said she and her family were evacuating to Tyler.
Eric Collins, a freshman at Lamar State College and a native of Galveston, helped his family with all of the necessities to prepare for the storm.
“We are going to Fort Worth or Dallas,” Collins said. “We boarded everything up and moved sandbags before we left, though. Hopefully everything will still be here and in tact when we get back.”
Some people in Texas would rather ride out the storm where they feel most comfortable — in their homes.
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Rodney Terry, a retired high school teacher also from Port Arthur. “This is my home and I’m not leaving it.”