It’s been a helluva past month in Houston.
First, the Houston community responded to the worst natural disaster in America in decades by taking in tens of thousands of evacuees (posts here, here and here) from New Orleans and the central Gulf Coast who had almost everything but their lives. Then, as that relief effort was winding down, Houston confronted Hurricane Rita, a category 5 storm bearing down for a direct hit on the city. Implementation of the city’s evacuation plan led to an estimated 2.7 million Houston area residents hitting the road, resulting in unprecedented traffic gridlock and gasoline shortages throughout the region. After Rita veered off to the east to make landfall on the Texas-Louisiana border, Houston is now dealing with the not insubstantial problem of how to have 2.7 million people return to their homes in the region without experiencing the same type of gridlock and shortages that occurred when they left.
Whew!

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