Well Rita's north of the Woodlands which is where I am holed up. We did ok. How is everyone else?
Just trying to check in & make sure people are ok.
I'm hoping none of you are crazy enough to start driving back home but if you do, please be careful. The is debris, power & traffic lights are out & of course potential flooding.
There is some questions being raised about what could've been done better for the evacuation especially concerning the EMPTY inbound lanes that people saw alongside PACKED outbound lanes in the Houston-area as well as the lack of fuel.
I'd like to address that & get others more knowledgeable to do so as well so I'm reposting a comment I made earlier:
Mayor Bill White did one KICK ASS job during Rita. He showed leadership, committment, and calm that people really needed to hear & see.
With so many smaller communities, local & state governments (& Tom Delay pushing for camera time), Mayor White had to do some serious management & he thoroughly knocked it out of Minute Maid Ballpark.
& he's still working hard. The people of Houston really owe their lives to his group.
In terms of critically looking at the evacuation:
Locally, I think the officials performed well but there were 2 big negatives for me which were as it turned out STATE responsibilities: (1) the lack of emergency fuel supplies for stranded motorists & (2) the delayed decision to open outbound lanes which most certainly contributed to some travel related deaths & injuries. Both almost derailed the evacuation & both can only be determined by Gov Perry.
My power's been out but I caught during one press conference that Mayor White had asked for fuel to be delivered & that the State did not know they were responsible for delivering emergency fuel to motorists & the city. Can someone point me to the link?
2ndly, Mayor White had asked for the inbound lanes to be turned to outbound but the State took about 1/2 a day to a day to do so?
I know that there is some setup time in converting the freeway (preventing people from entering it going inbound etc...) & definitely the good officers of Tx Dept. Of Transportation (TxDOT) should be applauded for the job they did during Rita: but someone (Gov Perry?) took longer than he/she should have to give those officers the green light.
Could anyone confirm these two. I know they occured; how much they delayed the evacuation is open.
Had these two things not been an issue, I don't think we would've seen so many stranded motorists, or the sad stories about an elderly woman dying at a gas station or the bus fire (due to overheated engine parts).
All in all, I think local/state officials will come out looking good in this (altho it's too early to tell). Rita took a right went into East Texas & Lousiana into more sparsely populated areas.
So people will be feeling too lucky to look for responsibility.
But the bottom line is that Mayor Bill White & many local officials (Shiela Jackson Lee was with him often) did a good job (as much as I can tell).
It does not suprise me that the Mayor is a Democrat.
Btw, I saw Tom Delay once. I don't like the guy & have a bias but he seemed to be there for face time & that's it. Didn't say anything someone else couldn't have said & even then wasn't that important. Agreed? Disagree?