(Note: I’m not going to be around this weekend, so if you want updates, you’re going to have to read the Houston Chronicle’s Rita blog and Alexander the Average. See you all again Monday.)

As Hurricane Rita made a northwesterly turn sooner than expected, Houston and Galveston, Texas, may be spared a direct hit from the hurricane, but New Orleans may not be so lucky as a recently repaired levee failed again. Update: Two levees have failed, and water is pouring into the city again.

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast.

The impoverished neighborhood was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina’s floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before Hurricane Rita struck.

Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said water is rushing over part of the levee that previously was breached. — Associated Press

Rita is expected to make landfall near Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, near the Louisiana state line. National Weather Service forecasters expect New Orleans to see tropical storm force winds, up to eight inches of rain and storm surge as high as six feet. Engineers have previously said a three-foot storm surge could cause patched levees to fail again. The tides are already three feet above normal in the area.

By Friday morning, the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but it was still bumper-to-bumper traffic from the outskirts of Houston toward Austin and Dallas. The state began escorting tanker trucks full of gas to empty stations in small towns along the way.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, the chief executive for the county surrounding Houston, told residents who had not left yet to stay where they were for the storm. — Associated Press

Meanwhile, the first deaths have been reported, from a freak bus fire which killed between 20 and 24 people, according to conflicting news reports.

And once again, the poor are not being evacuated.