Posted on 09/24/2005 1:13:44 PM PDT by Graybeard58
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.
Yes I watched the traffic jams on TV until our power went off last night. I also talked to people who turned around after going 10 miles in 8 hours. Other people I know unpacked their cars and went back inside, having never left the driveway. What I meant by my other post was that there was nothing unusual going on and the traffic was horrible.
Sorry to disappoint, but they called in the military to do it. Did you eat crab cakes for lunch?
It was on the news, they used c-130 planes and it showed them using the baggage cars to carry stretchers. Nursing homes were evacuated, etc by bus or whatever other means they needed.
If true it looks like the Democratic Mayor of Houston did a great thing.
Winter is coming, smug and pontificating, self aggrandizing, New England & NYC liberal types may get their comeuppance. A bad winter with many feet of snow and bitter cold could give them a real jolt of reality. If so, I for one have my answer ready for them and theirs; I could care less, where were your plans, why didn't you implement them, in short, go pound sand jerk offs.
It sure looked to me that they did a better job in Houston than the people responsible for the New Orleans evacuation. Houston is a much larger city than New Orleans and should have had many more problems with evacuation because of that.
Some people are reluctant to praise the effort of Houston officials for fear that the democrat Mayor might get some of the credit for it. So what if he does? Rake him for some of his failed policies. I am not at all familiar with Houston city government but if it is like democrat run government everywhere else in the country it is riddled with failed policy.
He did. I am surrounded by government democrats in this state, and I hope that they could learn from such a botched LA attempt. Though, we don't get hurricanes, we do get lots of floods.
On-ramp metering is more important than opening the reverse direction lanes. The capacity of a freeway is a function of the average vehicle speed. It's better to keep cars queued on side streets rather than turning the freeway capacity into a 1 mph virtual parking lot. They could have evacuated 100 times faster with one metering traffic cop posted at every on-ramp.
Are you saying the 2,000 drowned buses could have been used to evacuate the poor of NO if mayor Noggin Head had utilized that time to make a few return trips?
Perry also ordered 1,750 Army and Air National Guard personnel to position themselves as Joint Task Force Rita between Austin and San Antonio, a Guard spokesman said. The task force members are experts in medical and rescue operations, transportation, supply distribution, security and road clearing missions. Among their equipment will be 11 military helicopters and four C-130 transport planes.In addition, the Texas Air National Guard will begin flying Katrina evacuees from vulnerable shelters in Houston to Fort Chaffee, Ark., and a site in Tennessee, a FEMA official said.
Two Thousand Buses?
Where did you get that number?
I see...you are saying the media is trying to invent a story again? I agree with you...
I expect that you're semi-serious but London's first "tube" was pneumatic and worked just fine. It has long since gone to electric trains but the name remains.
Funny, I thought the same thing when I read the post. Not vacuum, more like "mag-lev" but underground, why not?
Regards,
GtG
That's conjecture isn't it? Since it didn't happen. A successful evacuation takes place before a hurricane hits, not after.
Nagin let school busses sit idly by while demanding Grayhound busses from the feds. That's a complete failure of leadership.
"I said the same thing last night on one of the hurricane threads and was called an idiot by several people."
Well, I have been saying it since Wednesday, and no one has called me an idiot yet. So feel flattered. People *listen* to you. They apparently do not listen to me.
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