Evacuation and Hysteria
Okay, I've been thinking this, but Dean Esmay said it. I've been wondering how necessary it is to evacuate Houston. Galveston I can understand because it's built on a barrier island. The whole purpose of a barrier island is to take the brunt of a hurricane for the mainland.
But Houston is pretty well inland. And it's a huge city with a lot of people sitting practically still in traffic while Rita clips along at about 11 MPH or so. And they may be still sitting there when the storm hits. This almost happened here in Pensacola with Hurricane Opal ten years ago. It strengthened overnight to, I think, a very strong Category 4 storm. People went into hysterics (thanks to radio DJs and such screeching, "This is the big one!") and with the storm very close they attempted to flee and clogged the roads. Fortunately, the storm weakened before making landfall and went slightly to the east of Pensacola. But if that had not happened, there would have been a lot of people stranded on the road with a Category 4 hurricane bearing down on them.
Here is my opinion on evacuation. Unless you live below sea level (like in New Orleans), live near enough to the water that storm surge and flooding is a threat, live in a trailer or unsound house or have medical issues that make loss of power or water life threatening, you should probably stay put. This is why I stay put...because none of the above applies to me. If a Category 5 storm were to ever threaten the area, I would certainly consider evacuating. But the thing is, these storms usually don't maintain that strength for very long and can weaken considerably before landfall (like Opal did then and Rita is doing now). But then you have hurricanes like Camille, Katrina and Andrew, which did not weaken. It's a tough call, but if you decide to evacuate, you can't decide at the last minute because then it's too late. You have to make that decision days ahead of time.
Update: I thought it fitting that I should highlight the post that Dean linked to on BeldarBlog. Perhaps I've done a poor job expressing my point here. Perhaps my use of the word "hysteria" was unnecessarily offensive. So here are some excerpts from Beldar's post explaining why he stayed rather than getting stuck in gridlocked traffic:
IMHO, local media have done a very bad job of distinguishing between "mandatory evacuation" areas (truly coastal counties, storm-surge areas) and elsewhere. Some of the adjacent coastal county officials are already bitching (publicly and unproductively) at Houston/Harris County officials for "ignoring the plan," which was to get the coastal zones evac'd first. Since so many Houstonians are also on the road ("early," in the view of those adjacent county folks), congestion is much worse for everyone. But I think the "fault" for that, if fault there be, can be laid more at the feet of the breathless media rather than Houston/Harris County officials. And ordinary folks are hyper-receptive to the hype because of Katrina.If folks have actually LISTENED to what Mayor Bill White has been saying on TV, he's only been twisting arms for the mandatory evac zone folks to leave, plus those otherwise at high risk (e.g., hospital/nursing homes, those in mobile homes, those in houses repeatedly flooded by bayous in past storms). But I'm inferring that Mayor White — a friend of mine from law school, who'd probably like to be Sen. or Gov. White someday if a Democrat can ever get elected again in a state-wide Texas race — doesn't want to DISCOURAGE rank-and-file Houstonians from evacuating either. So neither he nor the Harris County officials have been explicitly calling for high-ground Houstonians to sit tight for now. And thus, when amplified by the media megaphones and imprecision in the media's reporting, Mayor White saying anything at all about evacuation by anyone comes across to most people like "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" [...]
There's essentially nothing on the local media to remind folks that, for example, Houston isn't dependent on vulnerable levies, below sea level, and in between a huge lake and the Mississippi. The man-on-the-street interviews with those planning to stay are always spun to make them look crazy.[...]
I've seen three major hurricanes since I moved to Houston, plus a buncha lesser but still impressive tropical storms, and I *DO* respect Mother Nature. But I'd rather be emailing you from my living room right now than out-of-gas on a gridlocked interstate, and I think I have a rational basis for concluding that I'm also safer here.
I apologize if the tone of this post has offended those who evacuated. I'm just expressing my opinion here based on my own experiences.
Well, it's not just rain that hurricanes bring, but wind. And at 124mph, that's a bit like getting bombarded by tornados nonstop. If you live, like a lot of folks in the outlying areas of Houston, you probably have lots of trees in the area. And if your home isn't brick or is old or . . .
You get the picture.
I think it's sort of weird that we just saw all that destruction in New Orleans and now we're second guessing people wanting to evacuate Texas when the officials are saying "This is a very big storm."
Better safe than sorry. I'd rather Monday Morning Quarterback it after the storm has passed. I do hope they've all evacuated for no reason. But if they hadn't and the storm does the damage expected, everyone would be saying "Well, why didn't they get out when they were told to?"