Hurricane Rita and Katrina's after-effects

Politics International Politics
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Hurricane Katrine is done, Hurricane Rita, according the BBC broadcast I just caught, will likely be the third most powerful storm ever recorded to hit the US. Looks like it’s going to hit Galveston and Houston. At the moment it’s a category 5 storm, and is expected to be at least a category 3 when it hits.

It’ll hit Saturday. Before it does, if anyone has any information or insight to share, it’d be appreciated. I’d like to know what others expect before hand, just to have a few specific things to watch for when it hits.

Some issues I’m looking at, with a few randomly culled quotations:

  1. will the recent experience with Katrine make a difference? The preparations, no doubt, will be more intensive, but how much will it matter? What special considerations are there?

[quote=“NYT”]The approaching storm provoked fear in Houston and along a broad swath of the Texas coast, where a nuclear plant and huge petrochemical refineries pose special hazards. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that operators of the nuclear plant the South Texas Project in Bay City, a few miles from Matagorda Bay, were working to shut down both of its reactors.

Officials of the state’s environmental agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said Wednesday that they were receiving numerous reports from plant operators along the length of the coast that they were shutting down their industrial processes or minimizing operations as a precaution.

“In the wake of Katrina, people are being more vigilant and more conservative in their approach,” especially in light of that hurricane’s economic and environmental impacts resulting from damage at similar facilities in Louisiana, said David Bower, the assistant director for field operations of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.[/quote]

  1. geographically speaking, compared to N.O., how vulnerable is the Galveston and Houston area? Less I assume, but don’t know. From what I’ve read, Galveston’s in a BAD spot.

[quote=“MSNBC”]Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas told NBC

2

The situation in N.O. suggested that local governments lacked the resources to deal with this sort of evacuation. Houston proves it. Here’s hoping Bush gets it right next time.

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Apparently he has learned

[quote]After Katrina’s Lesson, Bush Is Heading to Texas

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - Under intense pressure to show that he has learned the practical and political lessons of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush planned on Thursday to pack his foul-weather gear and head to Texas on Friday ahead of Hurricane Rita, trying to make clear that he is directing an all-out federal effort to cope with the storm.[/quote]

This is how leadership should play out. Can give him props for learning his lesson.

4

“Bush” is directing an all out federal effort. :astonished: No wonder the evacuation is such a mess!

New York Times:

[quote]By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: September 23, 2005
HOUSTON, Sept. 22 - Heeding days of dire warnings about Hurricane Rita, as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

Acknowledging that “being on the highway is a deathtrap,” Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers.

Starting Wednesday night and throughout Thursday, the major evacuation routes, Interstate 45 north to Dallas, I-10 West to San Antonio, Route 290 to College Station and Austin, and 59 to Lufkin grew into hundred-mile-long parking lots. Drivers heeding the call to evacuate Galveston island and other low-lying areas took 4 and 5 hours to cover the 50 miles to Houston. And there the long crawl north began in earnest.

“The question is how many people will be gravely ill and die sitting on the side of the freeway,” said State Representative Garnet Coleman, Democrat of Houston. “Dying not from the storm, but from the evacuation.”

The situation raised serious worries about how the city would handle something like a terrorist attack, he said. [/quote]

5

So let me get this straight: Houston, a metro area of about 4 million people is evacuated because of the oncoming hurricane, and it’s Bush’s fault the highways are crowded?

6

No, no. Nobody could help a little congestion with 4 million people evacuating the area. But the article stated that “as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday,” and surely he ought to have been able to handle that! I mean, come on, an orange vest, hard-hat, and baton for directing traffic… how hard can it be? :wink:

7

Quote jaboney:

That’s the sort of humor I’d expect at the pub after a day on the garbage truck. The city engineers know what the capacity of those roads is and the mayor, presumably, knew as well. They then issued warnings about Rita and in the strongest terms adviced an evacuation, as well as a mandatory evacuation order for certain areas. After Katrina, what did they expect, business as usual? And what did they do in preperartion? Not enough apparently and that is particularly sad because a lot of things could have been done. Military planes could have been used to fly people out of there so that people didn’t need to use their automobiles at all. Rail lines could have been used for the same purpose. Surely there were passenger trains or empty freight trains that could have been commandeered for that purpose or brought in for that purpose. And if some people still needed to, or insisted on, using their personal vehicles (of course they would) then fuel trucks could have been stationed along the exit route. In ramps onto the highway could have been closed until congestion cleared. There could have been notices to the public to bring along an extra ten or twenty gallons of gas before heading out. Filling stations could have been topped up. This is just off the top of my head stuff but so far I haven’t heard that any of these ideas were implemented. Bush dropped in at fema headquarters for another stutter session on public television about all he had to learn but frankly I wasn’t impressed. In fact I think the USA would be safer if “I” was president of the United States. Anyway the saddest joke of all of course will be if Rita peters out before reaching Houston and the worst that happens is that a dozen people die in the rain in a hundred mile long traffic jam.

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Actually a lot of the things you suggested are being done. Galveston, in particular had a whole caravan of school buses getting people out. There are tanker trucks running up and down the highways filling people up, gas is being brought in to stations along the interstates heading out of Houston. This morning I saw an article talking about how hospital patients, evacuees from New Orleans and others were being flown out. I haven’t heard anything about trains, but that’s not to say that they aren’t being used.

Logistically, even if every possible measure is in place, an area as big as Houston is just hard to evacuate, particularly with the bus explosion in Dallas choking I-45 off before traffic reaches a big dispersal point.

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Uninformed BS as usual :unamused:

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And that was helpful how?

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It informed the posters that they were peddling uninformed BS, as usual.

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news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050923/ap_ … losion_hk1

[quote]Bus Fire Kills 24 Texas Rest Home Evacuees

By SHEILA FLYNN, Associated Press WriterFri Sep 23, 7:17 PM ET

A bus ferrying nursing home residents away from Hurricane Rita caught fire and exploded Friday while stuck on a gridlocked highway south of Dallas, killing as many as 24 people.

Early indications were that mechanical problems, possibly with the vehicle’s brakes, sparked the fire, which was then fed by explosions of passengers’ oxygen tanks, Dallas County sheriff’s spokesman Don Peritz said.

Authorities believed 24 people were killed, but that number could change, Peritz said. The medical examiner’s office was still working to determine the number of fatalities.

The bus was carrying 38 residents and six employees of the Brighton Gardens nursing home in Houston to another home in Dallas owned by its parent company, Virginia-based Sunrise Senior Living.

Sheriff’s deputies and the bus driver tried to rescue passengers but could not get everyone off the bus as it became engulfed in flames. The vehicle was reduced to a blackened, burned-out shell, with large blue tarps covering the bodies.

The fire caused a lengthy backup on Interstate 45, which was already congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. The interstate was shut down for about four hours but reopened after authorities made the unusual decision to move the wreckage so hurricane evacuees could get through.

“You have thousands of people who are in their vehicles trying to escape,” Peritz said.

Ten patients, including the driver, had been treated and released at hospitals by Friday afternoon. Four patients remained hospitalized, one in stable condition and three in fair condition.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team of specialists and investigators to the scene.[/quote]

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Yeah Bob, the bus fire is clearly Bush’s fault. If Bush hadn’t overreacted and pressured people to evacuate ahead of a merely Cat-3 storm which is weakening even as I type, these nursing home residents might still be alive today.

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[quote=“bob”]Military planes could have been used to fly people out of there so that people didn’t need to use their automobiles at all.
…
This is just off the top of my head stuff but so far I haven’t heard that any of these ideas were implemented.[/quote]
Yeah! The military could’ve stacked up those C-130’s and C-5’s in racetrack formations overhead, landed 'em like they were at Oshkosh – I’m not sure how, since all the planes would be the same, so the controllers can’t very well say “blue Bonanza, waggle your wings, ok, blue Bonanza, you’re the leader, land on runway 22, all others follow”, but anyway – and rushed 200-300 people on board each plane. Then haul them out the same way, a whole line of cargo jets at the same time. Screw the drink service, we don’t have time!

Figure 300 people per plane, and around four million people in the evacuated area, and it’ll only take . . . erm . . . 13,000 flights. Man, I hope that airport has one big-ass parking lot! Hey, where are those people going to go on the other end? Free Avis Rent-A-Cars all around?

So, lessee, 13,000 flights, O’Hare typically handles one every 52 seconds last I heard, so that’s 1661 flights per day, so it’ll only take OH CRAP EIGHT DAYS TO EVACUATE! Well, roughly 7.82, but what’s 0.18 days among whatever?

Well, ok, Oshkosh handles 'em faster, and they only lose a few aircraft each year – I think I personally witnessed three crashes in the dozen days I spent up there across a couple of decades. But maybe you begin to get the point?

Damn. Plan B, Bob? I’m sure you can figure something out with that immense blob of organic material rising from between your shoulder blades.

15

OK so the plane idea was pretty stupid (funny that didn’t hurt a bit) but what about the train idea? I notice you came up with no impressive statistics to counter that idea.

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Whatever, Bob. Hey, here’s one for you from the evacuation of residents from Houston prior to Rita:

Let’s compare and contrast that to New Orleans’ use of schoolbuses during Katrina:

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Less so than you might have thought:
news.yahoo.com/photo/050924/phot … rvy_photo2

[quote]
A member of the National Guard protects elderly patients on a luggage cart with umbrellas before they are transferred onto a waiting cargo plane (rear) and evacuated from Port Arthur, Texas, to avoid Hurricane Rita. Rita gave the US Gulf Coast its second pounding in less than four weeks, wreaking new havoc and floods with driving sheets of rain and threatening domestic energy supplies already at crisis levels.(AFP/Stan Honda)[/quote]

So, on the train thing, are you allowing people to take their pets? Fluffy the attack pitbull?
news.yahoo.com/photo/050924/480/txdp11609241629

[quote]
Tiki Island, Texas resident Denise Zeon waits in the car with her dogs, Snoopy and Princess, to return home Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005 after Hurricane Rita passed. The Galveston area was not seriously damaged by Rita. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)[/quote]

How about their household goods? Great-grandma’s solid oak dresser from 1892? The funny-smelling forty-kilo suitcase dripping a resinous substance that their “friend” from Humboldt County sent them?

How are they going to get around once they’ve gotten to their destination? Are we going to put them up in the Louisiana Superdome, er, well, Houston Astro…er, hmm, Comiskey Park and Safeco Field?

Since they’re not bugging out AFTER the disaster, but instead are leaving ahead of time, maybe they should be allowed a little freedom of choice? Go stay with Aunt Norma in El Paso instead of 25,000 random psychotics in a shelter?

Since they’ve got motivation, transportation, TIME, and stuff they probably want to take, how about letting them haul their own selves out of the way so that they might save a little something from the storm if it flattens their ex-home, and so that they can get around once they get wherever they want to go?

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Or how about this, pack them all so tight onto a couple of highways that it was miracle anybody got out.

Look it’s 3AM. I would rather sleep than fight at this point. We’ll no doubt be hearing assesments of the evacuation plan over the next couple of weeks. Assesments from people who were there. I’m sure it will be more enlightening than this.

Sweet dreams.

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[quote=“bob”]Or how about this, pack them all so tight onto a couple of highways that it was miracle anybody got out.

Look it’s 3AM. I would rather sleep than fight at this point. We’ll no doubt be hearing assesments of the evacuation plan over the next couple of weeks most. Assesments from people who were. I’m sure it will be more enlightening than this.

Sweet dreams.[/quote]
Hey, I hope I’m not keeping you awake.

Possibly most importantly, why force people to abandon their assets to the vagaries of the weather:
Yahoo image URL

[quote]
Vehicles are partly covered by flood waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.[/quote]
when instead they could remove them from harm’s way:
news.yahoo.com/photo/050924/480/txps11309240127

[quote]
Interstate 45 is empty as clouds from Hurricane Rita move over Houston, Texas, Friday, Sept. 23, 2005, as the sun sets. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)[/quote]

Looks like they did pretty well at getting the place cleared out in time for the hurricane. We just passed the vernal equinox, so sunset on Friday was about 6pm.

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And they did it without President Bush personally supervising :noway: