I remember the Oakland Hills fire. That was a densely populated area with little access, but it was still locally contained.
You would have evacuated Thursday night. Fine, let's work with that.
You would have had only 24 hours before landfall. My backyard rain gauge had only 0.3 inches of rain on Friday. However, on Saturday I had 5.9 inches, and on Sunday I had 13.9 inches.
This means that you would have filled the freeways on Friday, and then covered the evacuating people with 6 inches of rain on Saturday and 14 inches of rain on Sunday.
That is, unless you think you would have had an orderly, and steadily flowing, egress on Friday. Again, you have to remember that the Houston freeway system is designed to be the first defense, that is, they freeways are the catch-basins for flood waters. Therefore, you only had 24 hours before the freeways started to fill up with water.
How many people do you think you would have evacuated in 24 hours in a city the size of Houston, and how would you have cut of the flow of people after that?
-PJ
You keep defaulting to you are evacuating everyone. It is the failure in your argument.
It is too bad. Because you can’t think outside the box.
And yes, of course, wildfires ONLY happen in rural outback areas. Tell that to the people who live in the Front Range when they get 15 minutes to evacuate and to drive down the dirt mountain road.