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.
My purpose in pointing this out is not to criticize the governmental officials’ execution of the Houston evacuation plan, which has been thoughtful and generally good. My thoughts are more with regard to the plan itself, which during implementation encouraged all Houston residents — even those in non-mandatory evacuation areas — to evacuate. The result was that, despite the fact that Houston has the most highway lane-miles per capita of America’s large metro areas, dangerous gridlock and accidental deaths occurred, and the area experienced severe gasoline shortages as a result of the huge spike in demand. Moreover, the gridlock precluded suppliers from being able to deliver new supplies of gasoline and other goods, and despite the good faith efforts of the governmental officials, similar gridlock is occurring as residents return.
This is not to suggest that a hurricane evacuation plan is unnecessary for the Houston area. Clearly, the people in the areas of the metropolitan area that would be flooded by a strong storm surge need to get out. Similarly, arrangements need to be made for the poor and infirm, and for those folks who do not live in sufficiently solid structures to withstand a strong hurricane. However, if Alicia and Hurricane Carla in 1961 taught us anything, then it’s that most Houstonians survived the storms just fine by battening down the hatches and remaining in their homes. Moreover, the recovery from such a storm is facilitated in many ways by having property owners tending to their property immediately after the storm rather than attempting to find the back way home from afar.
Just some thoughts to ponder as Houston attempts to return to normal after experiencing one of the largest evacuations in American history. And in the meantime, enjoy Ken Hoffman’s alternately hilarious and insightful column about Houston’s Rita experience.
Update: The Chronicle’s Dan Feldstein and Matt Stiles weigh in on many of the same issues discussed above in this post-Rita article. And the Chronicle’s Eric Berger — who has provided both exhaustive and exhausting (he had to evacuate his family from Clear Lake) coverage of both major hurricanes over the past month — notes the following in his Monday post on Rita:
Why were people so far away from the coast leaving town? In College Station, my wife ran into a man who had evacuated from Conroe.
Mayor White takes aim at state for gas shortages
via KTRK-13:
Days after the evacuation that saw tortuous delays on Texas highways, Houston’s mayor says the handling of gasoline supplies is “totally unacceptable.”
Speaking to reporters, Mayor…
This is just a great Blog and thanks Tom for maintaining it. Yes, anyone North of Hobby should have stayed put, but the 24/7 media overkill made many simply panic. But cetainly we were lucky this time to have it turn. Double and triple the wind speed we did get would have been very bad.
As I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong) – A cat 5 impact at, say 175mph would produce winds around 125 at my house in North Montrose.
And, also as I understand it, even very sturdy houses built in 1940 do not stand up to 125 mph winds (I have a gabled roof, to make matters worse).
In summary wouldn’t a cat 5 collapse most houses in downtown houston area, thereby suggesting evacuation is wise?
Let’s assume that what you say is correct. What is the risk of a cat 5 storm making it all the way inland to inside the loop of Houston? Even with this storm, no experts that I know of predicted the storm to make landfall as a 5 (most expected it to be either a “weak” 4 or less). Alicia, which took the worse case path through Houston, generated winds that were over 100 mph at times inside the loop and yet the loss of life was relatively small and relatively few homes inside the loop incurred irreparable damage.
Again, my sense is that extensive evacuation out of certain areas of the metro area in the event of a probable 4 or 5 is advisable. However, I question whether it is prudent for government to be recommending that anyone in the metro area who has a place to go get out in the event of such a storm. I think there needs to be a real analysis of whether this is creating a more dangerous situation on the roads than the storm itself represents.
My thoughts are more with regard to the plan itself, which during implementation encouraged all Houston residents — even those in non-mandatory evacuation areas — to evacuate.
Tom, this is probably the main problem I have with your analysis here, and you can certainly correct me if you think I’m wrong, but…
In all the coverage I watched — and boy, was I ever glued to the coverage! — I don’t recall any government official or any weather official on the Big Three stations in town saying anybody who has a place to go should get out, aside from Councilmember Berry close to 11 pm on 9-21 when the storm had reached Cat 5 status and people were calling in asking if their homes could stand the direct hit that was being forecast (later that day and into the morning, we learned that the storm at that point was being measured as the third most powerful in history). Berry simply was saying if you have doubts about your structure and can go elsewhere, do it. I don’t have a problem with that sort of candor, although I didn’t hear it from anyone else. Most weather people, even when people were calling in and asking what they should do, were very reluctant to tell people in town to get the heck out, but said that was an individual decision to be made. There were a number of instances that I recall, however, where weather people did say that callers (given their circumstances) probably should NOT hit the road.
As I’ve said elsewhere, if people didn’t understand the difference between the mandatory evacuation because of expected flood surge in the worst case, and voluntary evacuation (which is kind of a silly term, since you and I would normally call it freedom to move about the country as citizens), then they just weren’t paying attention. The information was there. I thought our local media did an excellent job with that, although people can disagree (and some local bloggers not known for ever paying much attention to local media or politics can generate attention for themselves by being contrarian — I’m not talking about you, Tom, but I’ll just leave it at that).
People may have overreacted to Wednesday’s forecast of a direct hit by a Cat 4/Cat 5 storm, but I guess my reaction to that is, “so what?”
With the benefit of perfect knowledge now, we can look back and say maybe individuals overreacted. But I never heard government tell everyone to get the heck out (the implication in this post is that it did, and I respectfully but firmly disagree with that characterization). That was a decision made by individuals who looked up and decided they wanted NO PART of the worst-case scenario. Again, some of us call that individual liberty. 🙂
I don’t blame them for that decision. To me, individuals taking charge and making decisions about their families instead of waiting for government to tell them what to do is preferable, although it did create some chaos on our freeways. And honestly, had the worse case scenario developed and parts of town had been devastated, having that many people out of town and out of the way would certainly have made it easier for emergency officials to get in and help those remaining.
Kevin, thanks for the thoughts. As you can tell, I’m still formulating my final ones.
We are probably going to have to review the public statements of the governmental officials during the run-up to the storm to determine whether they contributed to the panic on the freeways. Given that I was not evacuating and was certainly listening to the forecasts more closely than the public officials’ statements, I could be wrong in what I heard.
However, as opposed to your recollection, I recall various statements being made through at least Wednesday night from our local officals to the following effect:
Now, you make a good point that people anywhere in the area ought to have the right to leave if they want to do so, and I certainly agree with that. Moreover, there is a “Katrina-effect” that certainly increased the non-mandatory evacuations, but is hard to measure. Finally, I agree with you that I find no fault with the media, who were just doing their job of making the public aware of a very dangerous storm.
However, the main point that I think needs to be examined closely is this — if, in fact, the officials were encouraging people in non-mandatory evacuation areas to leave rather than simply securing their property and battening down the hatches, did they contribute to bigger risk of loss of life in the evacuation than the storm itself represented?
Remember, most of New Orleans is much closer to the coast than the non-mandatory evacuation areas of the Houston metro area, Katrina, a stronger and larger storm than Rita, made landfall only 35 miles east of the New Orleans downtown area (a comparable landfall to Houston would be just east of Galveston Bay). Even in New Orleans, the damage from the winds of Katrina — which would be the main risk of damage and loss of life in Houston’s non-mandatory evacuation areas — was not particularly bad. The devastation came from the floods into the New Orleans soup bowl, a problem that Houston does not have.
Finally, with regard to the criticism that people like me who are raising questions about Houston’s evacuation plan are engaging in Monday morning quarterbacking (I’m not suggesting that Kevin is one of those, but others are), it occurs to me that the criticism misses the point and that the same argument can be turned around. Had Rita torn through Houston as Alicia did in 1983, Houston’s evacuation plan — which urged non-mandatory evacuations (if, in fact, that occurred) and unnecessarily exposed thousands of evacuees to being stranded on the road during the hurricane — would be coming under much more severe criticism than I am raising here.
Had Rita torn through Houston as Alicia did in 1983, Houston’s evacuation plan — which urged non-mandatory evacuations (if, in fact, that occurred) and unnecessarily exposed thousands of evacuees to being stranded on the road during the hurricane — would be coming under much more severe criticism than I am raising here.
Well, yeah, but if folks in new townhomes of questionable durability (how many skilled craftsmen versus labor purchased off a street corner do these places really have working on them? I think most folks would be shocked!) had been encouraged to stay put and a massive hurricane blew those things over like toothpicks and killed hundreds/thousands of people who were told to stay so as not to get in the way of people at greater risk, that would draw severe criticism too. The fact is, we’ve become a nation of harsh critics, on everything. I’m not saying that’s a bad or good thing, it’s just a thing. 🙂
We’re all going to engage on Monday morning quarterbacking, honestly, because we bloggers (especially!) do that. 🙂 I’m just going to encourage everyone to think of all of the alternative scenarios, not just the ones that suggest we overreacted.
I think we certainly must learn from our experience with congestion and fuel supplies on the road. I’m not certain just yet that the lesson to be learned is that we overreacted, though. At the moment, I’m more inclined towards “We reacted about right, we fixed problems on the fly, and thankfully were spared the worst-case storm scenario.”
I’d suggest a plan based on the gas lines of the 70’s. Even license plates leave or return on day one, odd license plates leave or return on day two.
I told my wife on Monday the perfect situation for Houston was for the storm to hit Orange and I am glad a was right. However, I took my family to Fort Worth on Wednesday night anyways because of the anticipation of the aftermath. I am so glad our city has not gone out of control as our city officials learn a few lessons from N.O. but on the same token, we did not sustain the damage they did. Rick Berry did a fantastic job of calming the masses including my wife and kids, with his candor and should be commended. All in all, I am pretty bless to have the means to leave early and return late with my family but I know lots of people and families aren’t as fortunate. Good luck to all those who will be trying to go home like my family and me and try to restart our normal lives. God bless us all.
Blawg Review #25
War on porn is “a running joke” at the FBI.
Kevin, I have to disagree with your point that “I don’t recall any government official or any weather official on the Big Three stations in town saying anybody who has a place to go should get out.” By calling for a “voluntary” evacuation, our leaders did exactly what you describe above. A voluntary evacuation has no meaning, unless it means that if you can leave, you should…and if you are inclined to stay, you do so at your own risk. I happen to believe that calling for the evacuation was the proper course of conduct at the time, based on the information available.
Unfortunately, in calling for both the involuntary and voluntary evacuation, our leaders forgot to devise and implement a traffic management plan. With all of the forewarning we had about this storm, it is disappointing that our leaders could not come up with ANY plan of how to get people out of town. That is the real issue, in my opinion.
We bailed out on Thursday morning about 10:00 and went to The Woodlands to stay with my cousin. We had reservations in Fort Worth, but with the storm weakening and turning by 16:00 when we got to The Woodlands, and the traffic backed up as it was we decided to stay put. I have spoken to several friends and colleagues that did make long trips; to Dallas; Brownsville; one even ended up in Memphis. They all noticed “convoys” of what appeared to be 2 or even 3 family members following each other, each alone in their vehicles. While it makes perfect sense to tow your camper while evacuating, others were towing 30ft boats.
I spoke to several friends that gave up and went home, even before the storm turned. Had we still been in the path when we reached my cousin’s house we would probably have continued, but with 1/3 of a tank burned covering 40 miles and no idea where we would be able to get gas, it would have been a difficult decision.
Should part of the evacuation plan require that people not use freeway space and gas to save their Chevy Suburban at the potential cost of getting people killed because they couldn’t get out? Instead of removing the passanger-count restriction on the HOV lanes, as they did, perhaps they should be increased, and perhaps applied to the entire freeway? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of individual rights and responsibilities, private ownership and personal freedom. It just seems that saving your other vehicle(s) – or your boat – is rather selfish when it traps others in the path of the storm.
Hoping to head home today
Our goal is to head back to Houston today, most likely leaving Dallas in the evening, a bit after the…
In your observations, you state “My purpose in pointing this out is not to criticize the governmental officials’ execution of the Houston evacuation plan, which has been thoughtful and generally good.”
“thoughtful and generally good”… for whom?
I don’t share this view at all, and you obviously have to work with them.
At a live press conference at 9:30 AM Central, Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels announced the following:
“Persons needing assistance with transportation are asked to contact family, friends, etc, to make arrangements. Please be aware that there are not enough governments vehicle to move everybody. People need to take responsibility for their own evacuation plans. Persons needing assistance and are unable to make transportation arrangements are asked to call 3-1-1. Those living outside the Houston area should call 713.837.0311. Extra personnel have been placed to handle the calls.”
I shudder to think what response people calling those numbers might have gotten. Why aren’t there enough vehicles to transport people out of mandatory areas if they need help? Why aren’t certain public schools designated as temporary shelters for those with no where else to go? What happened to the coordinated plan with the state?, which by the way, if you read does not provide for evacuation management.
If the city beaurocrats were doing a decent job, they would have prepared with the state to do simple things to assist in traffic flow like:
1. Set up fueling, food and water stations along the major evacuation routes. For example, 5 between Houston and Dallas would be sufficient to avoid this type of occurance.
2. Either read the A&M studies paid for by the state addressing the various scenarios and start implementing support solutions, or quit paying for those studies.
3. Pay attention to the fact that elected officials work for us, are paid by us, and are expected to provide support only in the form of available resources.
4. Force Centerpoint to upgrade the power grid to support the infrastructure of this city.
I think we all need to be more involved in this type of planning that will ultimately effect all of us and has historically turned out to be disasterous when left to the politicians.
Real solutions are available if the cities/state will pay the business professionals with the proper logistics expertise, and ultimately at a much lower cost than we will all be facing should a real natural or man-made disaster occur here.
M. A. Edmiston
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