Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- More than 24 hours after starting her evacuation from south of Houston to flee Hurricane Rita, Mary Coltzer joined a half-mile-long line to buy gasoline this morning. She was at a Shell station in The Woodlands, Texas, only 61 miles (98 kilometers) from where her journey began.

The filling station is one of the few in the area that are selling gasoline. Police watch the lines to maintain order, and customers are limited to purchases of $40. Coltzer, 68, said the 20 people in her eight-car caravan slept last night in a parking lot off Interstate 45 and haven't decided where they'll go next.

``Any place there's hot water, restrooms and a piece of clean floor to sleep on,'' said Coltzer, who was among thousands of motorists whose exodus crawled to a stop yesterday amid unprecedented traffic and inadequate fuel supplies.

Between 2.5 million and 2.7 million Texans heeded warnings to leave coastal areas, marking what Texas Governor Rick Perry called the biggest evacuation in U.S. history. State officials are rushing to take fuel to hundreds of stranded families as Rita nears the Texas coast.

Fuel trucks are making deliveries on evacuation routes, and helicopters will sweep the highways looking for disabled cars, Perry said today at a press conference in Austin. Houston Mayor Bill White, who said the state failed to pre-position fuel supplies on evacuation routes, pledged to get any stranded motorists in his area off the road.

Gridlock

Thousands of vehicles ran out of fuel or stalled in temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) yesterday as gridlock gripped I-45, I-10 and other highways leading out of Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city.

The 240-mile drive from Houston to Dallas took more than 24 hours for some motorists. A bus that evacuated 45 people from a nursing home near Houston yesterday caught fire south of Dallas this morning, killing 24 people and further slowing traffic.

Last night, local officials in Houston sent buses staffed by 350 volunteers to take water and other supplies to stranded motorists. The state has reversed 500 miles of inbound highway lanes to speed the flow of traffic out of the Houston area, Texas Transportation Department spokeswoman Gaby Garcia said.

``There are a number of motorists that need assistance,'' Garcia said. ``The big priority is to keep the traffic moving and make sure the road is open so they can get out of harm's way.''

Fuel Provided

The Transportation Department provided fuel to about 200 stranded motorists along I-45 this morning. Some families are being moved into shelters along evacuation routes.

``We will not have people sheltering along the highway,'' Mayor White said this morning at a televised press conference in Houston. ``We will not let that happen.''

Houston city and Harris County officials yesterday advised residents who weren't in the region's most flood-prone areas to stay put, rather than join the mass evacuation. Motorists who live in areas deemed relatively safe were told to return home if they were close enough and had enough fuel to do so.

Rita is a ``very dangerous'' Category 4 storm and has winds near 135 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Motorists said they were running out of supplies as traffic slowed yesterday. Gasoline stations and other businesses were almost all closed along the evacuation routes. There were no restrooms.

Only Station Open

At the Shell station in The Woodlands, owner Randy Pachar, 54, is selling premium gasoline for the regular unleaded price of $2.69 a gallon and is handing out food to customers. He had 2,400 gallons (9,091 liters) left this morning out of a 40,000-gallon capacity and opened up after making sure the police could come and maintain order. He said it's the only one of his 21 area stations that's open for business.

Jesse Brown, a 40-year-old truck driver from New Orleans, passed through the Shell station today en route to Dallas, where his son got a hotel room. After losing his own truck when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, Brown and his family evacuated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and then to Houston.

Now, the Browns are on the road again, packed in a van with 10 people. Among them is Brown's mother, Emma, who's in a wheelchair and on oxygen. They've been on the road for more than 24 hours and have only come the 30 miles or so to The Woodlands from Houston.

``We still running,'' Brown says. ``I don't know how far we can run from Rita. The devil don't never stop working.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Josh P. Hamilton in The Woodlands, Texas, at jphamilton@bloomberg.net; Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 23, 2005 13:58 EDT