Probably too many people concerned with union and school board regulations;but basically just Americans have a crazy belief that bad things hapen somewhere else,not HERE!
I was disabused of that notion before the age of 10 when Hurricane Celia hit in 1970. I have not stayed through another hurricane since! I was in summer school prior to my freshman year in college when Hurricane Allen hit in 1980. Aparrently most people in Coastal Bend had the same idea and according to my brother and parents, the evacuation was really messed up. It took them seven or eight hours to drive 90 miles. There were several stupid traffic signals in towns that did not yet have a highway bypass built. It was really obvious that local and state officials had not figured out how to run a proper evacuation. In 1999, hurricane Bret veered away from the Coastal Bend and hit the rather uninhabited King Ranch. Fortunately I was on vacation over 1,000 miles away. The big controversy was that lots of people were upset at Governor Bush, because a TXDOT bureaucrat in Austin refused to authorize reversing the direction of the southbound lanes of I-37 contrary to the expectations of local residents and politicians. I really didn't think that that decision should have been left to a politically unaccountable bureaucrat. Interestingly a few weeks later, there was a hurricane headed for Florida and Governor Jeb Ordered the inbound lanes of I-4 to be reversed.