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Friday, September 23, 2005

And what did they THINK would happen when evacuating this many people?
Posted by Jill | 8:28 AM

OK, wingnuts, these guys are in a state run by Republicans. I'm waiting for you to start blasting THEM.

Thousands of furious evacuees sweltering for hours on traffic-choked freeways Thursday put a stain on what had been a generally successful response by state and local governments faced with back-to-back weather emergencies in Texas.


"This was not in the plan," County Judge Robert Eckels said, turning away from the lectern after a news briefing dominated by questions about the gridlock that resulted from the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita.

For the most part, the officials didn't offer much analysis of what might have gone wrong. They focused instead on the scramble to keep thousands of motorists from what Mayor Bill White called a potential "death trap" should the storm strike while they were stranded on the road.

But Brazoria County Judge John Willy criticized other local officials for calling for voluntary evacuation when Brazoria was under a mandatory evacuation order. That, he said, put a lot of cars on the dedicated evacuation routes and prevented people from the south from getting out.

Gov. Rick Perry said state and local officials are trying to move more than 1.5 million people out of the storm's path, and said that despite the traffic snags, he was certain that anyone who wants to evacuate will be out of the Gulf Coast area before tropical storm winds begin to kick up at midmorning today.

"If you're in the storm's path, you need to git gone. You need to be on the road, moving out of the storm's path," he said. "Those few hardheaded ones out there who are going to ride this thing out, don't expect there to be a lot of support in those areas."

"This evacuation is historic in its proportion," Perry said.

The observation by Perry and others — that problems were inevitable in any endeavor to move more than a million people over a few routes under an emergency time frame — didn't stop criticism about how officials planned for, and implemented, the exodus.

Chief among the complaints is that officials at all levels didn't appreciate — or at least articulate — just how crowded roads would get.

Add to that the fact that the Texas Department of Transportation seemed flat-footed in effecting a contraflow plan to ease congestion by moving some outbound traffic into inbound lanes.

Why, some asked, didn't the agency time the lane reversals to coincide with the mandatory evacuations of low-lying neighborhoods and areas threatened by storm surge?

"Why wasn't TxDOT on the same page?" asked Houston City Councilman M.J. Khan, stuck for hours trying to get his elderly mother-in-law to the airport. "Yesterday morning, that should have been part of the plan."

TxDOT said its effort was hampered by the complicated nature of the task and a lack of personnel.

Officials also faced criticism because they didn't plan, or didn't plan adequately, for making sure enough gasoline was available for tens of thousands of vehicles crawling through summer heat.

"It has been completely predictable. You try to shove all that traffic onto a freeway system, and it ain't going to work. There's only so much roadway," said Bill King, a lawyer and former Kemah mayor who's long said the region wasn't adequately prepared for a large-scale evacuation.

"All this about the running out of gas? Well, duh," King said.


I wonder what's going to happen to people who tried to evacuate and end up stranded in their cars with no gas on clogged highways when up to 30 inches of rain starts to fall?

I guess they can always blame it on Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco....
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