Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Rita, downgraded to a tropical depression, moved northeast through the Mississippi Valley as officials in Texas and Louisiana started clearing roads and restoring power in the hurricane's wake.

Winds had dwindled to a maximum sustained 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) as of 4:00 a.m. central time, down from 120 mph early yesterday when Hurricane Rita slammed into the U.S. Gulf coast at the Texas and Louisiana border, bringing power cuts and floods.

With as many as 3 million people evacuated from coastal areas, no deaths resulted directly from Rita. The oil-refining centers around Houston and Galveston, source of about 12 percent of U.S. supply, escaped the worst. Insurers may face claims as high as $6 billion, according to storm modeler Eqecat Inc., far below estimates of up to $60 billion from Hurricane Katrina.

Advance planning ``mitigated many of the potential deaths we could have had,'' U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference yesterday. ``Yes, we will have property damage, but we are going to have very few deaths.''

Rita was about 20 miles southeast of Hot Springs, Arkansas, at 4 a.m. and was moving northeast, according to an advisory on the National Hurricane Center's Web site. The storm was forecast to keep to that course, the center said. A tornado watch is in effect for parts of Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Flood Warnings

Rain accumulations of 2 to 4 inches over the lower Ohio and Mississippi Valleys are expected today, the center said. Flood and flash-flood watches are in effect for parts of Arkansas, southeast Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Emergency crews were clearing roads and restoring power in communities along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts late yesterday as officials tried to assess the damage the storm did to the nation's refining industry. Yesterday's shift in Rita's path to the north reduced the severity of the storm and helped limit the devastation to platforms, rigs and refining facilities in the waters off Texas.

Crude oil today fell to the lowest since Sept. 13 in London trading. The International Petroleum Exchange opened for a special Sunday session, scheduled because of the potential impact of Hurricane Rita.

U.S. officials, mindful of the flooding and damage New Orleans experienced after Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall that killed more than 1,000 people, urged evacuees to not return home yet. Rita disrupted power to almost 1.2 million people and flooded low- lying areas including Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles and Cameron Parish in Louisiana.

Mass Evacuations

David Paulison, acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said yesterday that every mayor he talked to credited the evacuations.

Evacuation orders for as many as 2.7 million people in Texas created gridlock on highways last week and led to Rita's first casualties when a bus carrying elderly evacuees burst into flames outside Dallas, killing 24 passengers.

A tornado that spun off from Rita killed one person in Humphreys County, Mississippi and caused an unspecified number of injuries, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Janice Watson, an official in the Sheriff's Department.

Officials in Houston and Galveston were among those urging residents to wait before returning home because they would get in the way of emergency personnel.

Port Arthur

``We are not through assessing the damage,'' Texas Governor Rick Perry said yesterday at a news conference. ``We cannot assure you at this time that your community is safe to return to. We also need time to restock fuel supplies along the return routes and restock goods in stores.''

While the refining centers near Houston and Galveston avoided the worst of Rita's damage, some destruction was reported in Port Arthur, Texas. The area is near where Rita struck land at about 2:30 a.m. local time yesterday. The storm moved past Beaumont and Port Arthur, before reaching Jasper and spinning inland.

Those facilities on the waterways near eastern Texas and Louisiana account for about 7 percent of U.S. refining capacity.

Valero Energy Corp., the largest U.S. crude-oil refiner, said it had ``significant'' damage to two cooling towers and a flare stack of its Port Arthur, Texas, refinery. None appeared to come from flooding, Valero spokeswoman Mary Rose Brown said in an e- mailed statement.

The San Antonio-based company expects it will take two to four weeks to repair the refinery, its largest in the U.S. Motiva Enterprises LLC's crude-oil refinery in Port Arthur was also damaged by wind, the company said.

A large part of Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000, was still inaccessible due to extensive flooding.

``This is the worst storm I've seen in the 25 years I've worked for the city,'' said John Tomplait, superintendent of the Port Arthur water purification plant. ``My house is good, the roof's intact, but there are plenty of other people that have lost roofs and whole chunks of their houses.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Burke in New York at hburke2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 25, 2005 06:56 EDT