Even with head start, Houston had a problem

Texas officials sketched a staggered, orderly evacuation plan for Hurricane Rita and urged people to get out days ahead of time.

But tangles still arrived even before the storm's first bands. Panicked drivers ran out of gas, a spectacular, deadly bus fire clogged traffic, and freeways were red rivers of taillights that stretched to the horizon.

In an age of terrorist danger and with memories of the nightmare in New Orleans still fresh, the Texas exodus raises a troubling question: Can any American city empty itself safely and quickly?

Thousands of drivers remained stranded Friday to the north and west of Houston. Many were stuck in extreme heat, out of gas -- as gas trucks, rumored to be on the way, or at least buses to evacuate motorists, never came.

They were frustrated, angry and growing desperate, scattered and stranded across a broad swath of the state as the monster storm bore down.

Houston is a landlocked city, an hour's drive from the Gulf of Mexico. Besides Houston's 4 million people fleeing, as many as 2 million were trying to get out through Houston from the coastal side.

In Galveston County along the Gulf, authorities set up three evacuation zones, beginning Wednesday evening and staggered at eight-hour intervals, with the most outlying areas to be the first to leave. But people in all three zones left early anyway, further snarling traffic.

From Houston, the main roads out of town -- Interstate 10 to San Antonio, I-45 to Dallas, and U.S. Highway 290 to Austin -- were turned into one-way thoroughfares only Thursday, and even then the one-way flow began well outside Houston.

"There were some weaknesses," Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat, acknowledged to KTRK-TV on Friday. "We could have fixed some of the elements ... a fuel truck that works, a mechanical system that works, and opening the contraflow," the term emergency officials use for routing all lanes in one direction.

Later in the day, Jackson Lee told The Associated Press the state should have asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for supplies. "I'm marching people all over looking for gasoline," she said.

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Friday decision to order one-way flow came after the storm, originally on a track south of Houston, changed course and headed toward Houston instead.

"It's not perfect," he said. "I wish I could wave a magic wand and somehow transport people magically from Houston, Texas, to Dallas or other points, but that's not the fact when you have the type of congestion that you see in the state of Texas on a daily basis."

He added: "I think when you look behind later, it will be almost miraculous that this many people were moved out of harm's way."

State emergency management coordinator Jack Colley said 2.5 million to 2.7 million Texans had already been moved out of harm's way, and the governor said 25 buses would canvass Beaumont, looking for people still trying to get out.

By midday Friday, lanes were restored to normal traffic. Still, many remained stranded beyond Houston's suburbs.

Before the late 1990s, emergency management officials were in charge of evacuations, and transportation engineers had little interest.

But those engineers have devoted great energy to the problem since Hurricane Georges forced an evacuation of New Orleans in 1998, and Hurricane Floyd an evacuation of the Carolinas in 1999.

Rita and her hellish predecessor, Katrina, come in the new age of terror, as authorities try to draw up plans for clearing out cities in the event of deadly strikes with unconventional weapons.

Still, experts say the massive coastal zone that needs to be cleared of people before a major hurricane is far larger than the area to be evacuated after an industrial accident or a terror attack.

In the event of a nuclear accident, federal rules require the evacuation of a 10-mile radius around the plant. After a so-called "dirty bomb" nuclear detonation or the release of chemical or biological weapons, only the region immediately downwind of the release point would have to be cleared.

"Natural disasters just dwarf anything that's manmade," said Reuben B. Goldblatt, a partner at traffic engineering firm KLD Associates in Commack, N.Y.

Brian Wolshon, a professor of civil engineering at Louisiana State University, said Texas officials "will probably see there were things they could have done better."

But he added: "It's not economically or environmentally feasible to build enough roads to evacuate a city the size of Houston in a short time and with no congestion. It's just not going to happen."

It was a point all too clear to Bruce French, who left his home in Clear Lake, Texas, early Thursday, and ran out of gas just past Conroe, far short of his destination of Dallas. On Friday morning, he was stranded, waiting for fuel.

"They're giving $10 worth of gas if you're on empty and $5 if you have some," he said. "That's not going to get you very far."

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press writers Kristen Hays in Houston, Liz Austin in Austin and Suzanne Gamboa in Washington, National Writer Matt Crenson in New York and photographer Paul Sancya contributed to this story.

Considering this is the biggest evacuation ever attempted in US history, we didn't do too bad.

Not bad at all.

Not to mention the fact that the media is ignoring one important thing - those residents who evacuated for Rita won't be making the same mistakes again, i.e. traveling on I-45.

I may start a vanity thread on this, but my family and extended family (i.e. distant cousins), managed to move 45+ children, women, and the "elders"(my term,they don't like the term "elderly" or "senior citizens") from the Houston/Galveston, Corpus Christi, and Beaumont areas out to Austin and west of San Antonio to family members' homes who lived in those areas. Most of the men stayed to look after things, and were going to wait until we had more information. Even then, they knew where the closest relative was, and it was planned that if it was going to hit a certain area, they would leave those areas and stay at a nearby relative's place.

The weekend after we saw New Orleans fall apart, we had a mini-family reunion of sorts, and the topic eventually came up and we discussed what would we do about our families. To make a long story short, a few of the cousins put together lists of the individual families (several dozen) within our family, listing their contact information (including schools of the children, and places of employment for the adults), names and ages of family members, along with blood types and any special medical conditions where possible, and put together a map of where everybody lived across Texas and New Mexico.

A cousin who works for the state worked out evacuation routes depending on what part of the state people were in, that did not use any of the major highways (using mostly FM-type roads and backroads), and we even put together a little bit of information about locations of gas stations, rest stops, and hotels and nearest relatives or friends along those routes. Alternate routes were planned as well, at least one for each "major" route she laid out. Copies of thise maps were sent out to family members, and where possible, multiple families would meet up (meeting areas were mapped out, including areas where family members could come from the opposite direction to help them evacuate if needed).

Needless to say, we didn't think we'd be using it so fast, but when it became clear that a pretty wide area should be evacuated, nobody wasted time, and even those who left the Houston area thursday made it out here in a fraction of the time it was taking many people to get to Huntsville, Dallas, etc.

They may have had to take a more circuitous route to get out of those areas, but I think most agreed that they'd rather put more miles on their vehicles than hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic worrying about gas and water and bathrooms.

It is funny that when we were brainstorming this, we were throwing out all kinds of wild ideas, like trying to figure out where gas stations in various areas received their gas from (from North Texas, South Texas, East Texas, etc.), whether or not to get GPS units for every family, and a few other things, and even the stuff we actually did follow through on seemed a little crazy. After tuesday, none of it seemed too crazy.

Katrina taught us to rely on ourselves, our family, and our friends, before relying on any government.

Face it the Democratic Mayors or Houston and Galveston Failed to Evacuate all their people just and the Democratic Mayor or New Orleans failed to Evacuate all of his people.

LOLOL. Oh, my. I haven't seen this much misinformation posted in one place in some time.

Houston and Galveston evacuated 95% of their population. At best, New Orleans evacuated 80%, leaving behind their most vulnerable -- those without cars or resources, those in nursing homes and the disabled.

By contrast, Houston and Galveston used buses to take out those without resources, those in nursing homes and the disabled.

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