Hurricane Rita roared toward the Texas and Louisiana coast with 135 mph winds Friday, creating monumental traffic jams along evacuation routes and raising fears of a crippling blow to the nation's oil-refining industry.

The storm was expected to come ashore early Saturday along the upper Texas-Louisiana coast on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston a direct hit. But Rita could plow into the oil and chemical centers of Beaumont and Port Arthur, about 75 miles east of Houston.

Texas' emergency management coordinator, Jack Colley, predicted Rita would destroy nearly 5,700 homes in the state and cause 8.2 billion US dollar in damage.

Bus Fire Kills 24 Evacuees

Meanwhile, a bus carrying elderly evacuees out of the path of Hurricane Rita has caught fire on a gridlocked motorway, killing up to 24 people, authorities say.

The bus was engulfed in flames, causing a 17-mile (27km) tailback on the Interstate 45 highway, the main route north from the Gulf Coast to Dallas.

Police spokesman Don Peritz said early indications were that the cause of the bus fire was mechanical.

The vehicle was reportedly carrying about 44 passengers.

Officer Peritz said there the blasts were apparently caused by oxygen containers for the elderly on board the vehicle.

The inferno reduced the bus to a charred shell, with just its frame remaining.

The passengers were being evacuated from a nursing home in Bellaire, south-west Houston, when the accident happened about 17 miles (27km) south-east of Dallas, police are quoted a saying.

The Houston Chronicle newspaper quoted care home management company Sunrise Senior Living as saying 28 residents and six employees from Bellaire's Brighton Gardens Assisted Living care home had been on the stricken bus.

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