DALLAS — Retailers from Houston to Galveston and beyond prepared to close on Wednesday as Hurricane Rita, even more powerful than Hurricane Katrina, strengthened to a Category 5 storm packing winds as high as 165 mph.
Forecasters said the hurricane could make landfall this weekend in an area from coastal Texas to southwest Louisiana.
Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city with 4.1 million people and a shopping mecca, stands to lose significant retail revenue with the shutdown of many stores on Thursday and Friday and possibly through the weekend. Houston rang up more than $70 billion in retail sales in 2004, an 8.7 percent increase compared with the previous year, according to the Texas Comptroller’s Office in Austin.
Houston mayor Bill White asked employers to give days off to all nonessential personnel, ordered schools closed and mandatory evacuations in low-lying areas and for mobile home residents.
“What happened in New Orleans has put everyone in Houston in real panic, and no one wants to take any chances,” said Melanie Criswell, a sales associate at BB1 Classic, a two-unit women’s specialty business, referring to the devastation Katrina caused in New Orleans. “We will probably be closed before Friday or Saturday when Rita is most likely to hit.”
The exodus jammed roads in and around Houston and Galveston, a coastal city 60 miles to the south.
Galleria Houston, a sprawling upscale megamall near the city’s posh River Oaks neighborhood, reported some stores already had closed late Wednesday, but others remained open with customers still shopping, said Connie Hascher, director of marketing.
Galveston, which has a population of 60,000, was hit by the nation’s deadliest hurricane in 1900, when an estimated 6,000 people were killed and the city was leveled. The Houston and Galveston regions also were struck by Hurricane Alicia in 1983, a Category 3 storm (winds of 111 mph to 130 mph) that caused widespread damage and flooding.
“Galveston is mostly empty now; everything was mostly closed by noon,” said Nadia Linch, owner of Intima Boutique, a women’s fashion specialty store on Galveston’s tourist-driven Strand Street. “It’s a dead town, and those few who did stay behind are cleaning out grocery stores for food and water in advance of the storm. No one wants to take any chances after seeing what happened in New Orleans with Katrina and in 1983 with Alicia.”
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J.C. Penney Co., based in Plano, Tex., outside Dallas, said its Galveston area stores closed early on Wednesday and that it was keeping a close eye on the storm’s progress. “We want to be as prepared as possible for whatever might happen and aren’t taking any chances,” said Penney’s spokesman Tim Lyons.