[Political Junkie Too]

In all honesty, he didn't really have a choice with 5 million people. They only realistically had between Wednesday and Friday to evacuate, and everyone was treating Wednesday like a normal workday.

It wasn't until Thursday that the storm rapidly increased in strength. I believe that if they tried to start an evacuation on Thursday, it would have been like the Roman chariots in the Red Sea from the movie The Ten Commandments. Cars would have been bumper-to-bumper on the freeways when the water came.

-PJ

[a fool in paradise]

The hellride on 290 during Rita’s evacuation was because LIVs were getting out of their cars to walk the dog, pee, walk to McDonald’s etc. The cars kept rolling, maybe, about 1MPH.

Law enforcement was nowhere to be found the entire route. Gas station scuffles and what not were ignored.

Keep the cars moving and there wouldn’t be the problems.

And the news of the storm was there on Tuesday telling people to fill up their cars. Rain didn’t come to Houston until Saturday (minimal rains Friday).

Evacuating on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday wouldn’t have been a problem even with “24 hour driving conditions”. Waiting until the boss says “go home” at 11am on Friday is too late.

[ealgeone]

If this were a Republican mayor would the media give him/her a fair evaluation?

BTW...I do agree there wasn't much chance of evacuation. The storm did come up very quick.