On the heels of Entergy Corp.’s decision to place its New Orleans subsidiary in bankruptcy last week on the day that Hurricane Rita barreled into the Gulf Coast at the Texas-Louisiana border, the utility is now dealing with serious damage to its power infrastructure that is threatening to stall the recovery effort in East Texas from the storm.
On Monday, Entergy’s Texas subsidiary commenced rolling blackouts in the area of far north Houston that it services, including The Woodlands. The move was made to reduce stress on the utility’s damaged electrical system after Hurricane Rita and related tornadoes downed power lines and disabled most of the utility’s power plants. A total of almost 1.25 million accounts were without power as of Monday in East Texas and Western Louisiana.

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John Fund explores in this OpinionJournal piece the risk that long-standing Louisiana elements of corruption are likely to hijack a good part of the extraordinary amount of federal aid that will be flowing into the state in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That reality is likely not going to stop or slow the flow of such aid because, as William Easterly points out in this Foreign Policy (pdf) piece, such aid has the following beneficial effect:

The poor have neither the income nor political power to hold anyone accountable for meeting their needs–they are political and economic orphans. The rich-country public knows little about what is happening to the poor on the ground in struggling countries. The wealthy population mainly just wants to know that “something is being done” about such a tragic problem as world poverty. The utopian plans satisfy the “something-is-being-done” needs of the rich-country public, even if they don’t serve the needs of the poor.

Confronted with this confounding state of affairs, Stephen E. Landsburg proposes this innovative choice for spreading the federal aid to the victims of Katrina:

Before we spend $200 billion on New Orleans disaster relief, can we just pause for about three seconds, please? That should be long enough to divide one number by another. The numbers I have in mind are, on the one hand, $200 billion, and, on the other hand, 1 million people—the prestorm population of the New Orleans area, broadly defined.
Two-hundred billion divided by 1 million is 200,000. For the cost of reconstructing New Orleans, the government could simply give $200,000 to every resident of the region—that’s $800,000 for a family of four. Given a choice, which do you think the people down there would prefer?

Based on my anecdotal experience in talking with New Orleans evacuees during Houston’s relief effort, I can say unequivocally that every evacuee would prefer to receive direct aid over throwing federal relief funds into the black hole that is Louisiana state government.
Hat tip to Arnold Kling for the lines to the Easterly and Landsburg pieces.

This previous post explored the role of federally-subsidized flood insurance in attracting capital investment in New Orleans that probably would not have occurred had the owners of the capital been faced with paying the cost of private flood insurance. Until Hurricane Rita developments took us a bit off track, I had been meaning to pass along this NY Times article about a batch of lawsuits by plaintiff’s lawyers and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood that seek to eviscerate flood exclusion provisions in homeowner’s liability insurance constracts and make the insurers responsible for damages caused by flooding from Hurricane Katrina For those of us who prefer to pay less rather than more for such insurance, these lawsuits are a real bad idea, as the following and this OpinionJournal piece explain.

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A couple of days ago it was gridlock as an estimated 2.7 million Houstonians evacuated out of fear of Hurricane Rita. Today, it appears that at least a portion of that gridlock is developing coming in the opposite direction as many residents attempt to return to their homes despite a quickly-developed government plan to stagger the return of the evacuees.
During all of this, I have been giving some thought about Houston’s evacuation plan, as reflected by this earlier post. In 1983, Hurricane Alicia — a minimal category 3 storm — made a direct on Houston and Galveston. There was no evacuation to speak of and, thus, no gasoline shortages. The storm killed 22 people and caused damage costing about $4 billion in 2005 dollars. On the other hand, Hurricane Rita — a stronger category 3 storm than Alicia that did not make a direct hit on Houston and Galveston — has already caused more deaths (24 in the Dallas bus crash alone) than Alicia and resulted in a regional gasoline shortage, while the direct costs of the storm will likely be much smaller than Alicia’s.

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The always insightful Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution is already thinking about how to improve Houston’s evacuation plan:

“Pay people who stay behind. By the day, of course. And only if they own cars.”

Tyler’s plan makes a lot of sense, particularly for folks who live in sturdy structures in non-flood prone areas. The evacuation of Houston ended up being arduous because an unanticipated large number of people evacuated who did not live in the mandatory evacuation areas. Most of those folks would have been better off battening down the hatches and staying put, but it’s hard to criticize folks — particularly those who do not have a safe haven to ride out such a storm or who are worried about infants — for wanting to get the hell out. The number of non-mandatory evacuees clearly surprised governmental officials and that resulted in a the delay in getting all main freeway lanes going in the same direction to accomodate the evacuees.

As predicted during the morning yesterday, the Houston metropolitan area was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Rita, which came onshore at about 2:30 a.m. this morning at Sabine Pass near the Texas-Louisiana border.
In The Woodlands, which is on the north side of the Houston metro area (pdf region map), the strongest winds — which were probably 40 – 50 mph steadily with gusts of 75 mph — occurred between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., and have decreased steadily since then. Rain has not been particularly heavy, and my home has had power throughout the storm, although there are wide areas of Houston and the north end that have lost power. Interstate 45 to the east of The Woodlands appears to be a rough demarcation line on the north end where the wind and rain have been worse on the east side of that line. The area between Huntsville and Livingston to the north has been getting hammered hard over the past couple of hours, and the East Texas area around Jasper (just north of Beaumont) is really bearing the brunt of the storm at this point.
Conditions will gradually improve over the next several hours and, by noon or so, we will be able to venture out safely and assess the damage. My sense is that the primary damage in this area will be relatively light wind damage caused by fallen tree limbs, roof damage, broken windows and the like. Frankly, I’m looking forward to venturing out into the weather today because one of the few fringe benefits of these storms is that they cool down the atmosphere greatly, which is much appreciated in these parts because we have been experiencing an excrutiatingly hot late summer — the high temperature was 95 degrees yesterday.
Finally, I want to pass along my heartfelt thanks for the dozens of phone calls, emails, blog comments, blog posts and the like over the past several days expressing concern and conveying goodwill and prayers for my family and me. The outpouring of concern has been greatly appreciated by my family and me, and we are humbled by the gracious expressions of support. Thank you all very, very much.

Three emergency shelters have been established in The Woodlands to care for evacuees who got caught up in the bottleneck on I-45 leading out of Houston. The shelters are at The Woodlands High School at 6101 Research Forest Drive in The Woodlands 77381-4902, The Woodlands College Park High School at 3701 College Park Dr. in The Woodlands 77384, and The Woodlands McCullough Junior High School at 3800 South Panther Creek in The Woodlands 77381-2799. The Reverend Howard Huhn, the Minister of Outreach at The Woodlands United Methodist Church has sent out this email requesting the following:

Dear Friends,
Because of the traffic associated with Hurricane Rita, our local high schools (McCullough, TWHS, College Park) have opened as shelters. They are in need of bedding. If you have bedding available, please drop it off directly at the schools.
Thank you for being Christ to others.
Howard Huhn
Minister of Outreach
The Woodlands United Methodist Church

Jeff Master’s latest update of just a few minutes ago indicates that experts are increasingly forming a consensus that Houston and Galveston will avoid a direct hit from Hurricane Rita:

The latest computer models are tightly clustered around a landfall point just west of the Texas/Louisiana border. Confidence is high in this forecast. Houston and Galveston should escape major wind and storm surge damage, and only experience maximum sustained winds of 60 mph with gusts to 85 mph. It is still too early to tell what will happen after landfall, as the models all take Rita different ways. A major rainwater flooding problem will ensue after Rita’s landfall, with 10 – 30 inches of rain falling over a large area of Texas and Louisiana.

For the first time since Hurricane Rita entered the Gulf earlier in the week, the cone of uncertainty that shows the range where the hurricane force winds will hit does not include a substantial portion of the Houston area, essentially that part west of I-45.