Hundreds of thousands told to flee as hurricane comes

NEW IBERIA, La. -- Nearly a half-million people in Louisiana and Texas were urged to clear out on Wednesday -- some of them for the second time in a week -- as a fearsome Hurricane Lili barreled toward the Gulf Coast with 140 mph winds.

"We have a real disaster in the making," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "This is going to be the worst hurricane to hit the Louisiana coast since reconnaissance data has been available."

Resort towns boarded up, along with all 12 of Mississippi's Gulf Coast casinos, NASA's Mission Control in Houston, the nation's biggest oil import terminal, and the Tabasco bottling plant near the Louisiana coast.

"I got a funny feeling," ranch hand Wilson Miller said as he stocked up on cigarettes and sandwiches at a gas station near Lafayette. "When we get back it will be under water and there won't be anything left."

Lili was expected to come ashore in Louisiana on this morning as a major, destructive hurricane, Category 4 on the five-point scale. A Category 5 hurricane has winds in excess of 155 mph.

Forecasters warned that some areas could be inundated with 6 to 10 inches of rain and a life-threatening storm surge of up to 20 feet.

The remnants of the hurricane are expected to track up the Mississippi River and turn east at the Tennessee-Mississippi border. Some effects are expected to be seen in Southeast Missouri tonight, with the parent system moving in Friday afternoon or evening. The U.S. Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., is expecting 1 to 3 inches of rain across the region and says the storm has the potential to produce winds of 35-40 mph and possibly stronger gusts.

"It's still going to be fairly potent," meteorologist Kyle Sutherland said.

The storm is expected to leave more quickly than it arrived. Hurricanes weaken over land because their fuel has been taken away, Sutherland said. "They tend to clear out very quickly."

About 143,000 people were urged to leave the Louisiana coast, while in Texas officials advised the 330,000 residents in two counties surrounding Beaumont and Port Arthur to head inland because of the threat of a 9-foot storm surge.

"Destination? I have no idea. But it's going to be north," said Glen Guidry, who stopped at a gas station on Interstate 10 west of Lafayette with his wife and five children.

Gail Harrington, her son, daughter, six other relatives and a dog crammed into the family's two cars to drive as far from the coast as they could.

"We tanked it up. Wherever that gets us, we'll go," Harrington said at a grocery store in Delcambre, La., a small town a few miles from the water's edge.

Hurricane-force winds -- which extended outward 45 miles from the center of Lili -- were expected to reach up to 150 miles inland. At 11 p.m. EDT, Lili was 195 miles south of New Orleans.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry signed a disaster declaration and corrections officials moved more than 3,000 inmates to inland lockups.