September, 2005:

The Rita Blog has some info on how the rebuilding is going in East Texas. It also has information about Red Cross and Salvation Army relief efforts. I haven’t seen a whole lot about benefits for Rita victims; if you’re aware of anything, please let me know.

Shane Sklar, Democratic candidate for the US House in CD14, is spending some time in Chambers County (which is a part of that district) doing volunteer relief work.

I’m doing this for two primary reasons:

First, and foremost, it would be ridiculous for me to ask these folks to vote for me next November if I had not first helped them out in their time of need.

Second, I want to see firsthand a hurricane’s aftermath so I will be better informed about how we can improve hurricane preparedness and enhance homeland security.

I am going to periodically post my experiences here, so you can learn as I learn and reach your own conclusions. So keep an eye out for more “Shane’s Rita Relief Reports.”

Remember, give whatever you can and as much as you can to help the victims of this storm. Though many are saying we dodged a bullet in Texas, there are a lot of folks over here who are hurting and need our help.

He’s got a report of his first day there, so check it out. Lots more on the ground information can be found at KOGT radio out of Orange (link via Rafe Colburn, whose family was evacuated from there).

I had expressed surprise that I hadn’t heard of too many automotive fatalities during the Rita evacuation. Sadly, I’m not surprised any more.

A Chronicle survey of Houston-area counties and those along major evacuation routes to the north and west indicates that at least 107 people were killed by last week’s hurricane or died in accidents or from health problems associated with the evacuation of 2.5 million people from their homes.

One day before the expected announcement of a state-county-city task force to examine the problems that plagued the exodus, which doubled or tripled the travel time between Houston and other Texas cities, Mayor Bill White conceded, “I don’t think the evacuation should be a disaster in itself.”

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, whose wife spent more than 12 hours in a U.S. 290 traffic jam, called for a careful review of the evacuation. “People are downplaying the fact that people died in the evacuation and that is not right,” he said. “Is the chance of dying greater in the movement than in the storm? That’s the question we need to consider.”

Yes, it is. Tom has plowed this ground before, and while there’s commendable talk about ways to reduce congestion in the future, the obvious answer is to figure out how to convince people who are at less risk in their homes to stay. I don’t think you can alter how risk averse someone is, but maybe you can at least provide a better picture of what the odds are.

One thing that might help is to get some more clarity on what the true flood zones are. I recall that one of the effects of TS Allison was to expose the fact that out flood-plain maps were out of date. Where does that stand now? We know that Allison demonstrated that under the right conditions, flooding can occur where you don’t expect it, so if that storm was a driving factor in people’s stay-or-run decisions, better information about who really is in danger is called for. It surely can’t hurt, though again, with a sufficiently large storm, all bets are going to be off.

Here’s a great story called “Six lessons from online coverage of Hurricane Rita”, which takes a critical look at the role blogging played and gives it a high grade. Dwight Silverman gets some well-deserved kudos for his work in setting up various storm-related blogs on the Chron site, as does Laurence Simon, who pays the reporter back with a wonderfully characteristic quote. I will say this, though – the failure to cite Eric Berger‘s stellar efforts is a grave omission. Link via Metroblogging Houston.

Finally, on a related subject, the George R. Brown is once again a convention center. Congrats to everyone who worked there for a job well done.

You know, if shamelessness were a virtue, Smokey Joe Barton would have been assumed directly into Heaven by now. First, he is one of only eleven Congressmen to vote against the emergency relief package for Katrina victims. Next, he signs a letter urging support for the Gulf Coast Wage Cut. And now, he’s going for the trifecta by pushing to repeal environmental protections as his answer for dealing with hurricanes.

Riding a wave of concern over high energy prices triggered by Hurricane Katrina, congressional Republicans began a rush Wednesday to ease environmental rules on refineries and looked for ways to open new coastal waters to oil and gas development.

“More refineries will result in more domestic production of gasoline,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, as his committee began work on the energy legislation. “We cannot stop hurricanes but we can mitigate some of the adverse impacts.”

[…]

The Barton measure included easing air pollution control rules on refineries, setting shorter deadlines for issuing refinery permits and a government-funded “risk insurance” program to shield companies against lengthy regulatory delays in refinery construction. And it would give the federal government greater say in siting refineries and pipelines.

A companion measure, being put together by the House Resources Committee, called for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil development and would clear the way for states to allow oil or gas drilling in their coastal waters, including areas under a federal drilling ban. States would get half of the revenue from new lease sales.

Environmentalists and state and local officials on Tuesday accused sponsors of the legislation of exploiting the hurricane devastation and public fears about rising energy costs to push through pro-industry measures that, in the end, will be environmentally harmful.

“They’re using this disaster to roll back public health protection,” said Paul Billings of the American Lung Association. He argued that some of Barton’s proposals would jeopardize government efforts to require cleaner burning diesel and allow more air pollution from refineries and other industrial plants.

Organizations representing city and county governments and state officials in charge of implementing clean air requirements were mobilizing to try to block the GOP energy proposals.

“Though hailed as a post-Katrina package,” the proposals would “dismantle environmental laws that are not barriers to rebuilding the affected Gulf states,” said Donald Borut, executive director of the National League of Cities.

William Becker, executive director of two organizations that represent state and county air pollution control officials, said Barton’s legislation would allow refineries to expand operations without installing new pollution controls. Similar changes have been proposed by the Bush administration, but are hung up in court because of lawsuits from several states.

Because every bad thing that happens is just another opportunity to push your already-existing agenda as the panacea. It’s the Smokey Joe Way. Via PinkDome.

Continuing with the theme of risk aversion and how it impacted people’s stay-or-flee decisions as Rita loomed in the Gulf, here’s another data point to consider.

Water service to more than half a million Houston-area residents and several key industrial facilities was in jeopardy during the weekend when Hurricane Rita knocked out power to a crucial pumping station, officials said today.

CenterPoint Energy, Entergy and local governments joined to restore power to the station before the Lynchburg Reservoir, which is supplied by water pumped from the Trinity River, ran dry.

“Many Houstonians breathed a sigh of relief when we didn’t confront 100 mile per hour winds, flooding and the kind of damage that was inflicted on our fellow Americans in Lake Charles, Port Arthur and Beaumont,” Houston Mayor Bill White said. “But when you have a hurricane this big … there are some untold stories on the effects to our region.”

Flooding may not have been much of a risk for many Houstonians (though Tropical Storm Allison taught us that under the right conditions – and there was a real chance that those conditions could have occurred with Rita – places you don’t expect can flood), but this again shows that there are factors to consider beyond flooding. Any sufficiently big storm is going to be scary enough, and have enough unknown dangers, to tip the scales in favor of bugging out for many people. We need to account for this in the future.

On the other hand, evacuating has its risks, too.

At least 31 people died in Harris County as a result of circumstances surrounding Hurricane Rita, several of them from heat-related illnesses during the mass evacuation before the storm hit, the medical examiner’s office announced Tuesday.

More than half of those deaths — 17 of the 31 recorded so far — were of people evacuating to safer ground when they suffered some sort of medical distress, said Beverly Begay, chief investigator of the medical examiner’s office. None of the deaths occurred during the storm itself, she said.

The office completed its grim inventory Tuesday and announced the results after identifying all of the dead and notifying their families. The fatalities linked to Rita do not include the 23 Bellaire nursing-home residents who died when their bus caught fire Friday in Dallas County

[…]

The dead ranged in age from 14 months to 92 years. Though the deaths occurred over six days, about a third of the victims died Thursday when the evacuation crush was at its peak, clogging major Houston-area highways.

Nineteen of the 31 victims died or became ill while they were inside vehicles, and seven of the deaths were thought to be potentially heat-related, Begay said. Some had body temperatures ranging from 105 to 112 degrees, the report shows.

Now that I think about it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen more reports of highway fatalities during either the evacuation or the return. Driving 200+ miles, especially on crowded highways, is not exactly the safest thing you can do. More things to think about for next time.

The good news is that the latest tropical disturbance which could threaten the Gulf of Mexico appears to be disspating. The bad news is that there’s still two months’ worth of hurricane season to go, and we’re not out of the woods just yet.

Previously, I asked what might happen to cars which were abandoned on evacuation routes by drivers who ran out of gas; in particular, would they be stuck for sizable towing fees, as the friend of a correspondant said he was. I have since received an email from Melissa Noriega, who did some digging in response to that post. She tells me that at this time, only the City of Houston has addressed the concerns of towing fees for cars left abandoned by Rita evacuees who ran out of gas. The State of Texas has not asked any other municipalities to follow Houston’s lead, so if you’re unlucky enough to have been towed by someone other than a Houston SafeClear wrecker, you’re on your own. My best suggestion for getting a reimbursement or reduction in the towing and storage fee, based on what Melissa says, is to contact your State Rep’s office and ask for their help. You might also inquire with them as to whether this issue will be raised at the state level.

If you were towed in Houston, the number to call is 713-308-8580. Obviously, the sooner you take care of that, the better. My sincere thanks to Melissa for the followup. If anyone else knows of an evacuation-related towing, please let me know what happened.

UPDATE: Phone number for Houston towing issues corrected. Thanks to M in the comments for pointing it out.

So why did people run from Hurricane Rita?

Having seen the handiwork of Rita’s vicious cousin, Katrina, all of Houston’s coastal suburbs and a good percentage of everybody else in the area decided that discretion was the better part of valor. There was no talk of hurricane parties.

As the week wore on and Rita’s ranking escalated as fast as the price of crude — all the way to Category 5 in what seemed like the blink of an eye — so did the anxiety of people not easily moved.

Residents don’t flee The Woodlands, 100 miles from the coast. This time was different.

“Events make an impression to the extent they are recent, frequent or very intense,” said Michael Lindell, a professor at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. “We know that storms the magnitude of Rita are not frequent. But there was one that was recent and very intense.”

As I said before, it all comes down to how risk-averse you are. You can give a rational and lucid explanation of the likely effects that a Cat-4 hurricane barreling up I-45 would have, but fear is a funny thing and so is relative risk. There’s a reason why there’s a well-documented fear of flying in an airplane but not of bacon double cheeseburgers, even though the latter is much more likely to contribute to your ultimate demise. Let this be a lesson to us all: Whatever after-action reviews of the evacuations take place, they’d all better account for the fact that more people than strictly necessary will get the hell out of town when the next Big One looms.

Speaking of which, there’s an editorial and a news piece on that subject today. I’m still thinking about how I think things could be done better – it’s easy enough to point to problems, but coming up with workable fixes, not so much.

In other hurricane news:

I haven’t worked my way through these stories yet, but the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has an investigative report on FEMA’s recent history of disaster mismanagement. Lots of grist there for your mills, so check it out. Thanks to Sergio for the tip.

Everybody’s probably already seen this debunking of the lurid tales of rapes and murders at the Superdome in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but if not, do read it. Bottom line: It was about 99% baloney.

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA – Beron doesn’t remember his name – came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

“I’ve got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome,” Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

File that one away, because sooner or later you’re going to have to correct someone who hasn’t heard the real story. And may I add, similar allegations were made in Houston as well. Time for a little followup there, too, since it’s likely to be about as true. Thanks to Julia for the NOLA link.

Shorter Houston Chronicle front-page story: FEMA Screws Up Again.

Frustration and anger mounted in Southeast Texas on Monday over the response to Hurricane Rita by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

With homes smashed, trees and power lines downed and a looming shortage of food and water, one official even threatened to take federal relief supplies by force, if necessary.

“If you have enough policemen to take it from them, take it,” Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith said Monday during a meeting of city and county officials.

[…]

Southeast Texas officials charged that the federal agency’s response to Rita was inadequate.

“We are very short on food and water, and the FEMA trucks that were supposed to be here just aren’t here,” Griffith said.

[…]

Griffith was angry over an incident in which a FEMA truck was supposed to deliver fuel to a police facility but took the gasoline to a fire station. When the crew learned its error, it left, the county judge said, without providing the fuel to anyone.

If police had been available, Griffith said, they should have just taken the fuel.

Griffith also was outraged over FEMA portable generators that, he said, were sitting in a park and not being distributed.

“We can’t help it if politicians come here and just want to be seen by the media,” Griffith said.

“We hit the ground running with our own commodities and our own facilities, but we have no support.”

Beaumont officials also cited a shortage of water pumps and generators. They complained that federal relief teams had failed to show up and that fuel deliveries had not been made as promised.

And there’s more, from Port Arthur and Nederland. I see via TalkLeft that Michael “Brownie” Brown has been rehired by [FEMA] as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina. Well, here’s one more thing for him to testify about today.

We’re home. It was highway speed all the way, making for a much more pleasant journey. Thanks very much once again for all the kind words and good thoughts. I plan to return to more normal blogging in the morning. If you haven’t made the trek home yet, may you have a safe trip. See y’all in the morning.

The following came to me in email. I have not heard of anything similar to this, and I haven’t had a chance to do any news searching to see if there are other reports. I’m printing this to see if anyone reading this has any information.

Someone who came into my office said he missed his friday visit because he had to pick up his stranded brother who ran out of gas south of Dallas. Well now, his brother’s car was towed, and he can’t afford to get it. $550. How many others who were forced out and had to leave vehicles are going to be screwed by this? Is this gouging or at least taking advantage of people. State approved?

As I say, this is the first I’ve heard of anything like this. Certainly, under normal circunstances, cars which are abandoned on interstate highways will eventually be towed, and the cost to get them back will be several hundred dollars. I’m sure there were and still are quite a few cars along I-10 and I-45 which were left behind after running out of gas during the evacuation. How should they be treated? What would be a reasonable fee for the agencies that did the towing? Those cars do represent a highway hazard, after all. What do you think?

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, this Chron story has an answer:

Evacuees forced to leave cars along freeways because they broke down or ran out of gas may face another nightmare — paying expensive tow and storage fees to get them back.

It all depends on location. If the car was left on a highway within Houston, the city will pay the bill.

Anywhere else, you’re on your own.

Frank Michel, the city’s communication director, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency will reimburse the city $124 for each car towed under its Safe Clear mandatory tow program.

“The tow operators have agreed to do away with the rest of the fees,” Michel said.

[…]

More than 600 vehicles were towed from freeways. Most were taken to private storage lots. Those towed since Saturday morning were taken to Metro’s Park & Ride, 7821 N. Shepherd, where no fee will be assessed.

More than 150 vehicles were at the Park & Ride on Sunday afternoon. To find out where your car is, call 713-884-3131.

“If jurisdictions are allowing us to bring vehicles back, we are,” Houston police Capt. Lori Bender said, adding that the city has retrieved residents’ cars from Montgomery County and Jersey City.

If people have paid to get their car out of storage, they can ask for a refund, Bender said. The city will then reimburse the storage lots with FEMA money.

The city has not gotten complaints about price gouging, Bender said.

“We aren’t aware of any,” she said. “It’s too soon to know. A lot of people haven’t picked up their cars yet — they are still worried about getting their lights back on.”

So there you go. Check Melissa’s comment below for some suggestions if your experience differs from this.

Our goal is to head back to Houston today, most likely leaving Dallas in the evening, a bit after the normal rush hour. Scanning the Road Home Blog, it seems like I-45 wasn’t too awful yesterday, but we ought to be prepared to scoot over to US75 for part of the trip. I don’t think gas will be a problem, but I expect we’ll have the reserve can filled up just in case anyway.

This article about evacuation planning and the need for contraflow lanes is very well done and needs a response from state and local officials. I’m still willing to go easy on this, but we’d better make sure we learn well from this experience. Tom and Tory are giving the matter some thought, and I will return to it after I come back home.

Did you know that Dallas has a system of levees that help keep it dry, and that those levees could overflow and cause major flooding in the event of a big storm? Like, say, Hurricane Rita, had it not gone as far east as it did?

Downtown Dallas relies on a much-compromised 30-mile levee system to keep it dry from the Trinity River. Because of extensive development in the counties north and west of the city, the levees, completed in 1958, can no longer handle the severe storm runoff they were designed to contain.

Dallas is therefore now vulnerable to a far less serious storm breaching the levees and flooding business and residential areas that equal about 20 percent of the city’s taxable property value.

With only a day or so of warning, city officials would need to coordinate the swift evacuation of an estimated 100,000 people who live or work in flood-prone areas on either side of the Trinity.

The flooding would also complicate the city’s standard emergency plan, since key shelters such as Reunion Arena and the Convention Center, as well as the city’s emergency command post beneath City Hall, would all be flooded.

Scary stuff. Read the whole thing.

There will be many questions asked over the next few weeks in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita. One that’s being asked now is whether the inbound highway lanes could have been opened in a more timely manner that they were on Thursday.

The so-called contra-flow lane change, part of the state emergency plans, was implemented only Thursday morning, drawing criticism from frustrated motorists who ended up spending more than 24 hours on a drive that normally takes less than five hours.

Gov. Rick Perry said decisions were complicated by Rita’s changing course over the past several days.

Early projections, which had it hitting between Houston and Corpus Christi, moved gradually north.

At one point, forecasters fingered the Houston area and its 4 million residents.

“Once Houston in particular was in the bull’s-eye, if you will, then a decision had to be made, which Mayor [Bill] White and [Harris County] Judge [Robert] Eckels did appropriately and timely,” Mr. Perry said.

“Being able to switch over that southbound lane of I-45 and I-10, it doesn’t happen at the drop of a hat,” he said.

Transportation Department officials have said they did not strongly consider converting highways to one-way traffic before this week.

That step had long been considered a last resort.

But the size of the evacuation led officials to reconsider. By midweek, highways leading north and west from Houston recorded traffic increases up to 339 percent.

“It became absolutely apparent that more had to be done,” said Randall Dillard, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation.

Closing highways to inbound traffic poses massive logistical challenges.

The transportation department estimates that about 130 entrance and exit ramps were barricaded along Interstates 45 and 10 and U.S. Highways 69 and 96.

The closures then had to be staffed with police or other officials to prevent motorists from driving around barricades and causing head-on collisions.

Brian Wolshon, a professor of civil engineering at Louisiana State University, said Texas officials “will probably see there were things they could have done better.”

But he added: “It’s not economically or environmentally feasible to build enough roads to evacuate a city the size of Houston in a short time and with no congestion.

“It’s just not going to happen.”

Personally, I’m inclined to cut the decisionmakers some slack on this. I think the sheer number of people who evacuated was more than they expected, and I think once they realized this they acted as quickly as they reasonably could. This was a huge job. TxDOT and local police forces blocked off neaerly 200 miles of I-45 in a matter of hours. I’m just not willing to say they should have done it sooner than they did.

I mean, most people went to work in Houston on Wednesday. Schools were open. I-45 South and I-10 East were being used as they normally are. There was a risk of cutting people off from their homes before they had a chance to get out. You could have tried doing all this at night, I guess, but at what risk to the people who were doing the actual work clearing the roads and blocking the entrance ramps? I don’t buy it.

There’s one more thing to keep in mind here, and that’s even with the contraflow lanes, the traffic demand overwhelmed everything. I-45 didn’t start to move for us until we were north of Conroe, and that was only because people started to pull off the road. North of FM1488 (the original starting point for the I-45 contraflow) there’s only two lanes on each side. It’s that narrowing from six to four, and earlier from eight or nine to six, which will always cause bottlenecks. (And that doesn’t take into account other choke points, such as the junction at US59, which is also two lanes on each side.) Unless you’re willing to start evacuating several days sooner, and to enforce a south-to-north priority pattern (think of a church exiting one pew at a time, from front to back), you’re always going to have more cars than the roads can handle.

That doesn’t mean that we have to accept what happened as inevitable or the best we can do. I agree with Rick Casey that a full after-action review is called for, and I agree with Stace that we could have done a lot better ensuring there was enough gasoline for the evacuees. On this point, though, I’m okay with the decisions that were made.

Now that Rita has proven to be a non-menace to Houston, evacuees from the area are starting to return home despite pleas to stay put a little longer.

Houston-bound traffic was at a standstill by noon on I-10 just outside of Columbus as cars from San Antonio met up with people driving in from Austin. The snarl prompted many to pull off the highway, examine maps and consider alternate routes.

Billy Yarborough, who evacuated his Matagorda County home before the storm, opted to drive along a smaller highway to avoid sitting on I-10.

“We did this on the way out, and I am not going to do it again,” Yarborough said. “I don’t mind going a few more miles, if I can keep moving.”

Texas and Houston officials are scrambling to avoid a repeat of the grueling evacuation earlier this week, and they say leaving now is a bad idea. Texas Gov. Rick Perry called today for evacuees to stay put while authorities come up with a plan to stagger their return.

Because of the need to bring rescue crews and supplies into the region, outbound lanes of the highways will not be opened to returning traffic. State officials have not decided whether the government would be willing to refuel incoming cars as they did for those stranded on their way out of town, saying that scenario is too hypothetical. Fuel suppliers are scrambling to find ways to get much-needed gasoline into the area.

“Stay patient. Stay put,” Perry said this morning. “I can’t say in strong enough terms to those who evacuated the coastal region they should not begin to return for the time being. We are not through assessing the damage. We cannot assure you at this time that your community is safe to return to.”

[…]

Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels encouraged people to keep their ears open for the all-clear signal but acknowledged the government’s efforts will be largely advisory.

“Coordinating the acts of citizens — let’s be serious,” he said. “There aren’t going to be mandated days on when to come back.”

“If they are in a safe place and have power, they shouldn’t be making plans right now,” White said.

Nonetheless, a steady stream of traffic was returning on I-45 South this morning, as evacuees headed back to the Clear Lake area, League City, Dickinson and other communities in north Galveston County that were under a mandatory evacuation.

All area schools are closed until Wednesday, so for most people there’s no real rush. Our current plans are to return on Monday night, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on traffic conditions before we leave. One 17-hour drive with a baby and a dog is enough for my lifetime.

Along those lines, the Chron now has a Road Home Blog, which looks to have some useful info about current road conditions. I’ll want to break out the maps and check out US75, as this post suggests it might be a better alternative.

Here in the Dallas area, it’s windy, much cooler than yesterday, and overcast. No rain as yet, though. I refilled the car at a nearby Exxon station and chatted with a fellow who’d run with his family from Clear Lake. They left just after midnight on Thursday and needed 26 hours to get here. I sure hope their trip back is better than that.

UPDATE: Here’s the state’s plan for evacuees’ returns.

Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw today released the following state plan for evacuees returning to the greater Houston area:

· SUNDAY: Those living west of Interstate 45 and north of Interstate 10, including Tomball, The Woodlands, Waller, Hockley, Katy and Brookshire.

· MONDAY: West of State Highway 35 and south of I-10, including Richmond, Stafford, Rosenberg, Sugar Land, Pearland and those living inside Loop 610.

· TUESDAY: East of I-45 and north of I-10, including Liberty and Chambers counties.

Although there are no enforcement powers, McCraw urged evacuees to follow these guidelines to minimize traffic congestion.

“Returning is not only an inconvenience, it’s also becoming a public safety crisis. because even if they do get home, there may not be electricity, food in the stores and medical services.”

Looks like we picked the right day to return. We’ll see how it goes and decide from there.

Since we’ll be soon talking about rebuilding efforts again, I thought I’d post an update on the attempt by President Bush to allow federally-funded contractors to pay wages beneath the prevailing rate. The number of Democrats who have not signed on as sponsors of HR3763, the anti-Gulf Coast Wage Cut Act (as Josh Marshall calls it), is down to thirteen. Only one of the holdouts is a Texan. Care to guess who? If you said Henry Cuellar, you’re right. Richard Raymond, Ciro Rodriguez, this is your cue. Get those mailers ready for the primary. Thanks to The Jeffersonian for the link.

So far, all reports are that Houston has evaded major damage. I’ve spoken to my in-laws, my next-door neighbor, and my friend Andrea, who lives about a mile away from us. All are fine, all have power, and our neighbor reports that while there are some downed branches, our house has no broken windows. I’m very much relieved.

Every Houston-area blogger I’ve checked in on seems to be fine as well. The one I was most worried about was Jack, and he reports that there’s no major problems in his part of Seabrook. All of the Chron’s Stormwatchers look okay, too.

Good news for Houston is still not so good news for Beaumont, Port Arthur, and much of Louisiana. Rita may very well stall out somewhere over Texas and/or Louisiana and dump a hufge quantity of rain there. There will still need to be a big relief effort. And as Greg reminds us, the Red Cross still very much needs our help with that.

As things stand now, we’ll probably return Monday night, though we’ll have to see what road conditions are like, since we’ll surely be far from alone. For now, all is well. I hope and pray that it stays that way for everyone who is still threatened by Rita.

There’s a debate going on at SciGuy over whether or not the dangers of Hurricane Rita were overhyped (by the media and/or local politicians), and if that contributed to the extreme freeway gridlock yesterday. At least one local official is complaining that people who shouldn’t have evacuated were preventing those who should from doing so:

Brazoria County Judge John Willy complained that Houston and Harris County jumped the gun, encouraging evacuation before people on the coast could get past the big city.

“Everybody did a fabulous job down here until Houston-Harris County forgot that there was a plan, and they clogged up the freeways and byways where there’s still traffic sitting and waiting,” Mr. Willy said.

But both [Houston Mayor Bill] White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said late Thursday that they never called for a complete evacuation of Houston or Harris County.

“We’re asking folks to use common sense,” Mr. Eckels said. “If you’re not in a storm surge area, watch events. There’s no point if you’re not in a flood zone to jump up and get out in traffic.”

Our house is not in a flood zone. We came through Allison high and dry. You could say we shouldn’t have left. But – and forgive me if I sound a little defensive – we had our reasons.

First, hype or no, Rita’s statistics spoke for themselves. It was the third most intense storm ever at one point. It’s 500 miles in diameter, with hurricane-force winds reaching for 100 miles, so even a non-direct hit to Houston will bring lots of wind and fury. It still might stall over Houston and dump huge amounts of rain over a 3- to 5-day period, which is essentially what Allison did. And still nobody’s sure where it will go and what it will do. This is one badass storm no matter how you look at it.

Second, floods aren’t the only thing to worry about. Wind damage is likely to be heavy. There are four big trees within falling distance of my house, two of which are in questionable health. Even if they all stay standing, large branches may tear off and do who knows what. We did not have the wherewithal to cover up our windows, so breakage is possible. Were it just us, Tiffany and I may well have chosen to stick it out. With Olivia in the mix, we were not willing to risk it.

And then there’s the power outages that accompany big storms. CenterPoint was talking about outages lasting ten days. Alicia knocked out power for two weeks in 1983. Olivia has an ear infection right now, and it’s being treated by an antibiotic that needs refrigeration. It’s a small thing, but it’s there.

Bottom line, we were too risk-averse to ride this thing out along with Olivia. By ourselves, we might’ve done it. Maybe next time we will. I can’t see how anyone could look at this sucker and not contemplate getting the hell out of its way. To those who chose to stand their ground, including my in-laws, our next-door neighbor, and various friends, I salute you and I sincerely hope you’ll be able to laugh at our wussiness when we return. I’ll be happy to take it.

One last thing: It’s clear that Thursday was the worst possible day to leave. I’ve seen reports from people who left on Wednesday and today that make it clear those days were better options, though they still took a long time. That’s a lesson learned for the future: be prepared to bug out as soon as possible after you decide it’s necessary. We could’ve left on Wednesday night if we’d pushed it. In retrospect, we should have. However long it took us to get here and whatever eventually happens in Houston, though, I’ve no regrets that we did.

And now, the full story…

Yesterday, I learned of a new way to measure gasoline consumption. We left the house at 10:30 AM with a full tank. Six hours of mostly idling while the AC ran later, we were in Spring, 20 miles away. The gas gauge was pointing to the 3/4 mark. Things did not look good for making it to Dallas.

Thankfully, we had a gas can with 5 extra gallons in it, courtesy of Tiffany’s dad. While we paused for awhile in Spring at the home of Tiffany’s aunt and uncle – we figured we’d wait until dark, so we could mostly go with windows down – we emptied that reserve can into the tank. That just topped it up, meaning we’d used nearly a gallon an hour. At highway speed, that’d make for great mileage. Not in this case.

We got lucky once more when we saw on the news that the contraflow lanes had reached as far south in Spring. A little reconnaissance showed that the southbound entrance at Cypresswood, where we were, was just opening to northbound traffic. We hastily packed up and headed back out, just before 6 PM.

For the first 12 miles or so, we flew along at normal speed. We knew it wouldn’t last, though, and by the time we were in The Woodlands, both sides of the freeway were crawling along. It was a teeny bit faster than before, but that’s like saying that molasses pours out faster than ketchup. At 9:30 PM, when a cranky and overheated Olivia finally fell asleep (we had stuck to our plan of limiting AC usage, and could see the difference in the tank indicator), we’d made it to the north side of Conroe, about 30 miles away from Spring.

And then…it was all clear. We actually hit 40 MPH and more. Some people had exited in Conroe, which was a shelter location. Others were pulling off to the shoulders and median. How many had run out of gas, and how many were taking a break, I couldn’t say. We saw many more people do this all the way to Dallas. As midnight came and went, I saw more people sleeping, in pickup truck beds and on the grass. One such grouping of cars with sleepers was just south of I-20; by this time, it was close to 3 AM.

We drove at highway speed to Hunstville, where both sides of the freeway bottled up again; this continued until we were north of the state pen. That was the pattern in almost every town with an exit – some cars got off, others pulled over. Same thing at rest stops.

Beyond that, we were delayed by construction zones south of Corsicana (which I swear was in the same state the last time I drove to Dallas in 2001) and around Ennis, where the southbound lanes returned to their normal state; this is about 200 miles north of where they began. Say what you want about TxDOT (and I surely do), I think this was a hell of a feat to accomplish in one day. We also paused to stretch our legs and walk the dog in Corsicana, at an exit that was surprisingly uncrowded despite the marquee announcement two exits earlier that there was gas available there. Tiffany took over driving at that point – I’d been doing that since we began, some 15 hours before.

Murphy, where we’re staying, is to the north and east of Dallas. We passed through Dallas proper on US75, then into Richardson before getting to our destination. We arrived a little after 3:30. Olivia woke up and was full of energy while we unpacked. I sat up with her for awhile to let her wind down (this also gave me the chance to post and email about our journey’s end), then we all fell asleep by 5.

So here we are, for what I hope is a relatively short stay. I’m glad to see that Rita is weakening and that current projections are a bit more favorable for Houston. I’d like nothing more than for all this to have been unnecessary. I’ll be more than happy to have been proven a fraidycat. (More on that subject in the next post.)

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone for the kind words and offers of hospitality. I’m truly humbled by the outpouring of generosity so many of you have shown. Thank you all very, very much.

I am cautiously becoming a bit more optimistic about how this storm will turn out, based on stuff like this. Nothing will make me happier right now than for Rita to be far less than originally advertised. To everyone who is in Houston or elsewhere in its path, please stay safe.

(I was almost done with a long writeup of our eighteen-hour oddysey from yesterday when a nap-resisting Olivia struck a well-aimed blow at the Escape key and wiped it all out. Sigh. Maybe later.)

We have arrived in Murphy. Our earlier estimate of 1 AM was optimistic by about three hours. Olivia’s awake, Harry’s a little freaked, and we’re all a bit frazzled, but we’re here and we’re safe. Thank you all very very much for the well-wishes and good thoughts. Please keep thinking them for everyone who’s still in Rita’s path. I’ll be back with the full story of The Drive That Wouldn’t End when I’m coherent.