It’s the last day of the summer. I’d originally planned on doing a rundown of my favorite songs of the summer, but not today.
It seems that Rita has decided to bombard my hometown. Hurricane season is really messin’ up the groove, but the stories from the freeways of Houston are no good.

Seuss left Houston about 9pm CDT last night. From the sounds of it, he’s gone forty-seven miles. His parents couldn’t get from Pearland to Intercontinental airport–which I figure to be about 30 miles, also–so they’ve decided to just hole up in a downtown hotel with Seuss’ grandmother. Another friend is moving at a rate of about three hours per mile.
Yeah, you read that right.
And the evacuees are being chased from their haven.
If I were a praying man, I’d be demanding some explanations, were I in that situation.
The plan is to turn all inbound freeways into outbounds. So, if you’re in I-45 North, you’ll be on a fourteen lane freeway instead of a seven. That’s a great plan that will cut the traffic in half, but that ain’t much.
In this situation, there ain’t much that can be done, but it just sucks to hear someone tell you his folks and grandmother are going to stay behind.
I think folks will be able to get out. Folks have time to get gone, but this is so many more people than were trying to get out of New Orleans. And even though Houston is full of major highways, there are really only three place to escape to–Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin. Each uses a different freeway, but each freeway is backed up.
But then comes the gas issue. Some stations in Houston were running out last night. Now, I don’t know this for fact, but I’d assume the gas trucks would be coming from the refineries at the Ship Channel. That means that the gas trucks would have to take the same congested routes as the rest of traffic, which has been backed up for nearly twenty-four hours. What’s that mean? Lots of people are sitting on the last tank they’ll see for a while.
Worst story–my sister, who lives in Port Arthur and got out, reports that gas stations down there were watering down the fuel, so there were cars dying all over the place as folks tried to escape on I-10 East.
All bad.
If you’ve got Houston people, call them. If they haven’t left yet, tell them to get their stupid asses on the road. I had someone tell me that, “as long as we leave today, we’ll be okay.” If they leave today, they might get to Dallas by Saturday.
Maybe. After ‘Trina, who’s rolling the dice on a hurricane? This isn’t like New Orleans. Cats in Houston have cars because you can’t live without one. New Orleans has a strong public transportation system and is small enough to be handled by buses. Houston ain’t like that, so you gotta have a whip.
And another city on the coast may be obliterated. This time it’s Galveston, which is still recovering in some ways from the Hurricane of 1900, the worst natural disaster to hit the U.S. in terms of lives. They responded to that by building a huge seawall. Not only is that wall effective, but it is a bizarre training ground for young reporters. I clearly remember Shern-Min Chow braving Gilbert in 1988 (or was it ’87) while she was getting slung back and forth along the top of that wall.
Not sure the wall can handle this.
Not even sure New Orleans can deal with this. A big storm surge and we’re back to where we started there.
And I’m back here as the source of hurricane news. I’ll keep you updated on what I’m hearing from the freeways. It can be hard to get calls through, so I’ll let you know what I hear from calls coming out.
Update – Some people tried to get slick and go north on I-45 South before that’s allowed. Those folks are being forced to turn around, go south, and then get on I-45 North. Those people have just added five hours to their trip. Matter of time before fistfights start on the freeway. If you’re the praying type, pray no one gets rear-ended out there.