Poor evacuation planning could kill thousands

[questioner]

I shake my head every time I turned on the news and saw all those cars trapped on the highway in and around Houston in 100 degree heat running out of gas. Right next to them was a 12 lane highway going INTO the City with NO traffic. There should have been a plan to open up those lanes days ago.

Many people decided to stay or returned home out of frustration. IF the Hurricane heads back towards Houston and the people who wanted to evacuate die from the storm, the City and State officals should be thrown out of office and possibly tried for murder!

 

[sodaseller]

I understand the authorities have reversed trffic on the incoming as of this am

 

[Charade]

Was it really poor planning or did a lot of people not follow the plan? I heard a guy on the radio yesterday (from TX) say there were "zones". If you lived in a certain "zone", you were to evac at a particular time (not sooner). The problem was that many people seemed to not follow the rules or possibly didn't pay attention to or know about them and evac'd too soon which is what's clogging up the roads.

 

[sodaseller]

Was it really poor planning or did a lot of people not follow the plan? I heard a guy on the radio yesterday (from TX) say there were "zones". If you lived in a certain "zone", you were to evac at a particular time (not sooner). The problem was that many people seemed to not follow the rules or possibly didn't pay attention to or know about them and evac'd too soon which is what's clogging up the roads.

Don't know anything about that and you are probably right. But I was surprised to hear it took so long to reverse the highways

 

[Qwackertoo]

I have read about zones A, B, & C and that they were based according to lowest laying population, and should evacuate accordingly. I think everyone just decided to get the heck out of there and therefore the greater than expected traffic jams. Perhaps they should have stepped in earlier and reversed traffic flow in an unprecedented move at that point in an evacuation. Can you imagine IF it is this bad in Texas what an evacuation in Los Angeles CA or Long Island NY would be like? Hopefully many large metropolitan areas will re-evaluate their own evacuation plans and adjust accordingly. They still have almost 12 hours so just goes to further illustrate you can NOT wait less than 20 hours before a Category 4 or 5 (or lower) hurricane to issue mandatory evacuation orders.

Deana

 

[Geoff_M]

Don't know anything about that and you are probably right. But I was surprised to hear it took so long to reverse the highways

Presumably, up to a certain point you still need the roads into the city open... if nothing else to allow resource pre-positioning. It looked bad that the in-bound lanes were sparsely used, but it's probably not safe to split the in-bound lanes.

As for the "orderly" evacuation comment... I've read one Houston-based blogger that said that the "Katrina effect" and the local media's constant "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" coverage has led to the scene that's like 10 people trying to get through an exit door at the same time.

 

[bsnyder]

The officials obviously waited longer than they should have, but it's not as simple as just saying "let's reverse the flow". Assets have to be put in place for miles and miles to shut down the entrance ramps. And then you still have a bottleneck at whatever locations you have to merge the traffic back to two way.

Some reports are that over a million people evacuated voluntarily - that is, they weren't in an evacuation zone but chose to leave anyway. Which is not a bad thing, but one that officials have no way of predicting. You can make a case (and I did right after Katrina) that the next big storm would automatically cause a knee-jerk reaction among a lot of people that really don't have to leave. It obviously did. But officials didn't really have much time to adjust to that possibility.

I'm not going to judge the success of this evacuation on anything other than saving lives. If people get to safety, that's the bottom line, no matter how long they had to sit in traffic to get there. With a storm of this magnitude, it aint gonna be pretty. It's not a vacation, it's an emergency.

 

[wvrevy]

1 - It's way too early to say that it was "poor evacuation planning". Simple fact is, there just isn't any way to get that many people evacuated in a short period of time. There are only so many roads capable of handling that kind of traffic, and with so many people trying to use them at the same time...Nobody in the world could handle a situation like that without some snags.

2 - It's all Bush's fault.

 

[Tigger_Magic]

2 - It's all Bush's fault.

I'm just glad I swallowed my mouthful of ice tea before I opened this thread, otherwise, I'd be cleaning my monitor right now. Thanks for the laugh, wvrevy. (BTW, ITA!)

 

[bsnyder]

2 - It's all Bush's fault.

 

[Geoff_M]

I-45 North of the city. It looks like the traffic picture is improving, per the WSJ:

10:00 a.m.: the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but it was still bumper-to-bumper traffic from the outskirts of Houston toward Austin and Dallas.

Link

 

[RadioNate]

Bush will be in SA to take a look at the preperations today. Just saying.

Anyway. They started implementing contra flow (something TX had never done before) on Wednesday night. Yes it took until Thursday afternoon to really take effect but they needed to get the equipment in place. Unfortunately contra flow hasn't really helped. It's been in affect for more than 12 hours and the traffic problems are still there.

The biggest problems are on the road to Dallas. Why everyone choose Dallas, I don't know. I think that is where Houston is supposed to go as Corpus goes to San Antonio. Since Corpus' manditory order has been lifted people are leaving San Antonio so it would make more sense for Houston residents to take I10 (which is also using contra flow lanes) into SA than try to get to Dallas.

There is also the huge problem of broken down/out of gas cars and now the bus accident.

 

[ThAnswr]

1 - It's way too early to say that it was "poor evacuation planning". Simple fact is, there just isn't any way to get that many people evacuated in a short period of time. There are only so many roads capable of handling that kind of traffic, and with so many people trying to use them at the same time...Nobody in the world could handle a situation like that without some snags.

2 - It's all Bush's fault.

You're incorrigible. LOL.

Yanno what my first reaction to the thread title was: AGAIN!

 

[DStar4cup]

another thing is the roads that come out of Houston bottleneck down to 2 lanes. There is all kinds of road construction up I-45 going to Dallas.

 

[ThAnswr]

I would've thought people would've found others roads to leave the city. There are little country roads you can use to get all the way El Paso. And I really hate to be flippant, but Houston has always been bad traffic-wise. There's always this construction going on to the point where I haven't taken the same routes to get to my cousins' in Houston/Pasadena the same twice in 12 years.

One year, we coming from Florida (we lived in Fort Worth) and a cattle truck had overturned on I-45. Mother of God, we were stuck for 6 hours.

I hope someone comes up with a plan before Rita comes ashore and people are stuck in their cars.

 

[sodaseller]

Is anyone else getting the impression that much of this may be unnecessary given Rita's changing track. It appears more and more that Houston may not bear that significant a hit. Which may make citizens less likely to evacuate in the future. Citizens no less than generals always fight the last war

 

[ThAnswr]

Is anyone else getting the impression that much of this may be unnecessary given Rita's changing track. It appears more and more that Houston may not bear that significant a hit. Which may make citizens less likely to evacuate in the future. Citizens no less than generals always fight the last war

You hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

 

[DisWDWMay]

Here's a link that shows the mandatory evacuation areas.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9429714/

All those in these areas should leave for higher ground now if they haven't done so as Hurricanes are notoriously unpredictable. The roads in Houston has appeared to have cleared so you still have time to move to North or West Houston. But trying get out of the city would be too dangerous at this point as there are still traffic jams on all the routes out of the city.

 

[Pete's Mom]

2 - It's all Bush's fault.

Hush your mouth!

 

[C.Ann]

This morning it was reported that the gridlock was the result of people not evacuating soon enough and people taking 3 vehicles PER family..

Looks like things are improving somewhat now though.. Let's just say a prayer for anyone and everyone - whether they're on the road or in their homes..