Saturday, September 24, 2005

Going Home - The Plan

For all those evacuees from the Houston and Galveston areas, the real storm from Rita played out on the interstates as over 3 million people jam packed the roadways into a 100 mile evacuation log jam. The local evacuation "plan" proved to be flawed and will need to be redone as part of a post-mortum analysis on Hurricane Rita. Moving 3 million people has proven to be a task that will require the pre-staging of gasoline supplies, not sending traffic into areas that can't handle it, using all lanes on the interstate as outbound lanes, and requiring longer timeframes for people to pick up and leave the metro area. The entire Texas area is now bone dry when it comes to gasoline, so officials are begging residents to obide by the return "plan". This picture shows how the city of Houston would like for residents to return in a staggered manner. Well tonight, the roadways outside Austin towards Houston are log jammed with bumper to bumper traffic. I-290 is said to be another mass of cars moving at 5mph towards Houston. People want to get home and they are coming back to Houston whether the infrastructure can support it or not. I think this just proves that when it comes to disasters, it is hard to have a "plan". 3 million people are gonna do what they want to, when they want to, while local and state officials will be left with the explanations. The looting and flooding in New Orleans shocked us with Katrina. The evacuation scenes have shocked us with Rita. At least with Rita, most people have a home to go to. Lets hope everyone gets there safely.

SCM

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