quote:

---

Times:

GALVESTON, Texas — On this day, everything was already out of whack, and Hurricane Rita was still more than 72 hours away, spinning into a fury in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Target store — normally bustling — was empty save for a handful of weary police officers buying beef jerky, and the staging area for ambulances set up in the parking lot. Patients with IV poles by their sides were queued up on gurneys in the hospital lobby. And the broad white beach, on an afternoon of near-record heat, had been left to the shorebirds.


Mary Adams, the psychic on Seawall Boulevard, was packing her white Cadillac on Wednesday in front of her bright blue office at the beach. She was following the advice she had been giving out all week: "Evacuate the island as soon as possible, because it doesn't look very good to me."

Adams had scoured the future before Hurricane Alicia hit this fragile barrier island 22 years ago, and "it wasn't as bad a prediction as this one is going to be," she said.

"This one, I find, is going to be a little worster."

---