I don’t understand why the news is full of pictures of people fleeing Hurricane Rita en masse - is Texas not a predominantly dry, landlocked area that’s not below sea level? Are people just freaking out because the memory of the recent hurricane? I don’t recall any evacuations or mass hysteria like this ever before when Hurricanes were impending.
I own copies of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel August 22 and 23 1992 which show thousands of people attempting to evacuate Hurricane Andrew. Category 4 and 5 does probably give a greater sense of urgency. Houston is not like New Orleans. However, many of the resources needed for immediate recovery are tied up in LA, MS, and AL right now.
I’d much rather ride out the storm in a hotel room than in Houston without electricity.
There is no doubt that seeing the horrors of Katrina in New Orleans motivated a lot of people to flee from Houston, Galveston and Corpus Christi who would otherwise have stayed and tried to ride the storm out.
BUT…
Texas is a large area, and while much of it is inland, there’s a VERY long coastline, one that’s subject to hurricanes on a semi-regular basis. The greatest natural disaster in U.S. history was a hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas in the year 1900. That one killed over 6,000 people.
Moreover, the largest city in Texas (and the fourth largest city in the entire U.S.A.) is Houston, which is right on the coast. So, while most of the LAND in Texas is far from the sea, a huge number of PEOPLE are very close to the sea.
Will this hurricane be as devastating as the 1900 Galveston storm? No one knows- there are some indications that it MAY be easing up, and MAY not hit where it was intitally predicted to hit. But don’t kid yourself. The potential for disaster is great, and millions of people COULD be in harm’s way.
So, don’t let your cliched, sterotypical ideas about Texas mislead you. You are not seeing millions of paranoid rednecks and cowboys in the desert panicking over a hurricane that can’t possibly reach them. You’re seeing millions of urban people fleeing coastal areas where hurricanes have proven extremely deadly in the past.
I’m sure that NO had a lot to do w/ it, but I think it also goes to show the difference of mindset of the 2 populations. It seems like one is willing to take things into their own hands while the other waits for gov’t help.
I’m not sure this is true or fair at all. From the reports I’ve been reading there are plenty of poor folk in Texas who simply can’t go anywhere.
This is both unfair and inaccurate. The state government of Texas is the driving force behind the evacuations.
To be sure, people are more willing to obey government calls for evacuation because they saw the devastation caused by Katrina.
You have to realize that, in regions where hurricanes are common, people tend to get rather blase about them. Talk to a South Floridian about hurricanes, and you’ll often get a non-chalant shrug. People in hurricane territory have seen dozens of such storms, and MOST of the time, there’s just a lot of heavy rain accompanied by a few uprooted trees, a few broken windows and a few downed telephone poles. After a while, that just doesn’t seem like a big deal.
So, in many cases, when people are told to evacuate a storm zone, people just snicker," Again? They ALWAYS tell us it’s the end of the world, and in the end, it’s never as bad as they say." In fact, I GUARANTEE that in the few hours between the end of hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the levee, there were LOADS of people in New Orleans saying, “See? I told you it was no big deal! All that fuss for nothing.”
If Katrina weren’t so fresh in people’s minds, I’m sure many folks in Houston would be ignoring Governor Rick Perry’s calls for evacuation. But after seeing what a hurricane CAN do, people are listening, this time.
Houston is subtropical, and is fifty miles away from the coast with half of that distance in one direction covered by Galveston Bay. The city is flat, like the rest of the Texas Coast, and is prone to flooding. Even without hurricane force winds, the water dumped by tropical storm Allison (2001) killed twenty two people and caused five billion dollars in damage.
I’ll second what astorian said, that a lot of people on the coast are jaded when it comes to hurricanes. People don’t sit through hurricanes because they expect a handout; most ride them out because they or their families have done so for decades.
I saw the maps and plans for this evacuation at least a year ago, along with computer simulations of the potential flooding along the coastline in the event of a major hurricane hitting Galveston and the Houston ship channel.
Many people here still remember Hurricane Alicia which followed about that course in 1983. And don’t forget how hard Houston got hit by Allison in 2001 - which was only a tropical storm but stalled over the city and rained for five days.
I don’t think this has much to do with Katrina. It’s just good planning, and the long experience of gulf-coast dwellers.
I don’t think eastern Texas is especially dry — but in any case, how would local dryness spare people from the dangers of a hurricane? If you magically picked up Rita and dropped it on Las Vegas, that just means the locals would be killed by flying poker chips rather than flying barbecue tongs. (Along with the usual pointed sticks, shards of glass, detached stop signs, small stray dogs, and whatnot.)
East Texas is absolutely not predominantly dry. The stereotypical image most people have of Texas as dry and arid is more typical of West Texas. Also realize that Texas is over 900 miles across.
Houston, Texas has a subtropical climate. It’s annual rainfall averages 46 inches, and the average humidity is 60%. You can also have stretches of weather when the humidity hangs out right around 100%. (For comparison, the average annual rainfall for Connecticut is about 42 inches.)
The area around Houston is also very flat, and is thus flood-prone. My grandfather’s house is about 50 miles from the coast, and his elevation is only 65 feet above sea level. (For comparison, in Connecticut, I live about 30 miles from the coast, and my house is over 550 feet above sea level.)
Because the area around Houston is so flat, the rainfall that accompanies hurricanes causes lots of flooding. The problem is amplified if there is a storm surge, which raises the elevation of Galveston Bay. All of the bayous which carry stormwater through the city (which ultimately empty in Galveston Bay) then back up and empty into the streets and often up into peoples homes.
–robby (native Houstonian)
I think the New Orleans disaster is definitely what made Texans move quickly when the Rita warning came in. It’s easy to get lazy when the sense of danger is hypothetical and abstract. No way could future potential hurricane victims not have been affected by the images of New Orleans…even if their locale doesn’t have the kind of water issues (levees, being below sea level) that New Orleans did.
Heck, images of Mobile and Gulfport and Biloxi are pretty bad too (though not nearly as much so as New Orleans) and they’re probably more comparable to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Until somebody has hunkered down for 10-12 hours watching the trees get ripped out of the ground, roofs flying off, loosing power, wondering if you house is going to hold up, and listening to the horrifying sound of a powerful hurricane…it’s pretty hard to understand what the decision to leave or stay is all about.
Personally the NOLA situation had very little with our decision to leave this time around. We stayed for Alicia and Allison but the predictions of taking a hit from a cat 4-5 at Matagorta-Galveston were more than we wanted to risk staying for. We’ve had longstanding plans for years of leaving for anything like an organized cat 3 or above.
Even just now the forecaster on TV says this storm is going to be much more devastating than Alicia……If that turns out to be true my house may be gone this time tomorrow or badly damaged. We simply could not risk it even if others make a different choice and the damage turns out to be minor. I’d be VERY happy to have made an unnecessary call on this one…we have loved ones that did not leave. 
I’ve been seeing these reports and, without exception so far, they are a bunch of garbage.
So far I’ve seen no fewer than 5 reports interviewing “poor people” who “want to leave” but are “left behind.” But in every single story, the people they are interviewing ARE NOT IN THE EVACUATION ZONE!
They are not emptying the entire city Houston. They are evacuating people from specific, pre-defined zones along the coast. To this end, they have brought in busses sufficient to get pretty much every single person out. There’s still at least 12 hours left before the storm arrives, and so far there are no stories coming about people who are in the evacuation zone but can’t get out.
That’s the thing - they are! Well, not literally, but for sure, people were fleeing who didn’t really need to. Thus the gridlock. In storms past the authorities used to beg people to leave, and most would stay. In the past it was mostly people in flood-prone areas, people in non-sturdy housing, people subject to storm surge, or poeple who for mostly medical reasons couldn’t live without electricity for a week. Suddenly, for Rita, EVERYONE is getting out, even folks 50 miles from the coast! I can’t help but beleive it’s because of Katrina.