HOUSTON (Texas), Sept 23: Hurricane Rita stayed on course on Friday for a major hit on the southern United States as 24 people died fleeing Texas and new floods hit stricken New Orleans.

A 500-kilometre stretch from Port O’Connor in Texas to New Orleans in Louisiana became a virtual ghost coast as an estimated two million people headed inland to escape the second major storm in less than four weeks.

Rita weakened slightly but was still expected to be a “major hurricane” when it makes a landfall early Saturday, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

Hundreds of thousands of people packed into buses, cars, private jets and riding bicycles headed away from coastal towns and cities.

One bus taking elderly nursing home residents away from the storm zone caught fire on Friday near Dallas, killing at least 24 people, reports said.

A backup of vehicles stretching more than 32km built up behind the charred bus.

Police said the fire may have been started by oxygen canisters used by some of the elderly passengers.

The KXAS Houston television station quoted police as saying there were 43 people on the bus and at least half of them were killed in the accident.

The storm claimed its first victim on Thursday when an elderly woman died of apparent heat exhaustion while stuck in a massive traffic jam in Texas.

As the search continued for bodies from Hurricane Katrina on Aug 29, New Orleans saw new flooding from the heavy rain from Rita.

Water flowed over a levee into the city’s ninth ward and was soon waist high, witnesses said. New Orleans was devastated by flooding after Katrina for which the death toll rose on Friday to 1,075.

Only the most hardy survivors from Hurricane Katrina remained behind in New Orleans, where US army engineers were busy shoring up water defences after Katrina.

About one million people fled Houston, Texas, alone, according to city officials.

The Texas port city of Galveston was virtually empty.

Computer projections warn that the city could be swallowed up by a flood tide.

Galveston city manager Steven Leblanc estimated that 90 per cent of the city’s nearly 60,000 residents had fled. “It feels like a ghost town to me, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

Some vehicles ran out of fuel on the roads inland and were abandoned on the highway.

“We’ve got no gas. We’re dealing with heat exhaustion, heart attacks,” Sheriff Randy Smith of Waller County, Texas told local TV. —AFP