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Anyone who can needs to get out of Houston. The aftermath of this flood is going to be worse than anything we have seen so far. Polluted water is everywhere, infrastructure is gone, and we are going to see cholera, dengue fever, malaria and more. Transportation and logistics is seriously imperiled. There will be food shortages and critical lack of medical supplies and drugs. Crime and lawlessness will be rampant when the water recedes as desperate people seek out the things they need. Hording and price gouging will be the rule of commerce for weeks.
Longer term, this is the second "historic" flood in as many years. Aside from the fact it will take a decade to recover, it is clear that Houston has too much risk. Businesses and people are going to leave the area and not return.
That's exactly correct. Evacuation can be done in stages, with the police monitoring who's accessing the highways out of town by blocking/opening on ramps, and making both sides evacuation routes. Coastal cities do this all the time.
There is no reasonable way to evacuate millions of people.Where would they go? How would they get to where-ever? For how long? Then what?
What happens on relatively sparsely populated barrier islands is not the same thing as Houston Metro.
The evacuation for Rita was reportedly the greatest in US history. 48 hours on the road to Dallas, bumper to bumper.18 hours to San Antonio. Hundreds o died on the road. Rita was the hurricane that wasn't. People had homes and businesses and jobs to return to.
Media is reporting hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, thus far. It will take years to recover.
My cousin is still stranded in his home in Houston. He is lucky he owns a 4 story home so he currently has 2 floors (one being a rooftop deck) to live on while they wait for this to pass. Obviously, it is going to be a long road for these people to recover. Homes and cars are destroyed. My cousin is lucky because he is a very successful doctor and has the means to rebuild his life. Many people do not have that same luxury. I am praying for everyone affected.
There is no reasonable way to evacuate millions of people.Where would they go? How would they get to where-ever? For how long? Then what?
What happens on relatively sparsely populated barrier islands is not the same thing as Houston Metro.
The evacuation for Rita was reportedly the greatest in US history. 48 hours on the road to Dallas, bumper to bumper.18 hours to San Antonio. Hundreds o died on the road. Rita was the hurricane that wasn't. People had homes and businesses and jobs to return to.
Media is reporting hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, thus far. It will take years to recover.
I think people who believe a major metro can be evacuated are mostly rural/small city dwellers. Anyone who lives in a big city knows how a holiday weekend means gridlock on the routes in/out of the city. And that involves only a very small fraction of the residents out on the highways.
There is no reasonable way to evacuate millions of people.Where would they go? How would they get to where-ever? For how long? Then what?
What happens on relatively sparsely populated barrier islands is not the same thing as Houston Metro.
The evacuation for Rita was reportedly the greatest in US history. 48 hours on the road to Dallas, bumper to bumper.18 hours to San Antonio. Hundreds o died on the road. Rita was the hurricane that wasn't. People had homes and businesses and jobs to return to.
Media is reporting hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, thus far. It will take years to recover.
You have asked the bolded question above over and over and over again, but those who are disparaging the mayor of Houston, or who are saying they should have been pushing for a massive evacuation, simply skip over those questions as if they're not there.
In addition to the reality that it's not realistic to move millions of people--to where, for how long, and then what?--many people simply lacked the means to make such a move. If you can't afford a hotel for an undefined number of weeks and have no friends and/or relatives to take you in, what then?
That's the reality of many people who remained home. They simply couldn't afford to evacuate even if they had wanted to.
The mayor could have ordered evacuation of the flood prone areas to shelters on higher ground within the city.
Those 150 buses that got lined on up the highway Sat morning could have been used for that but they were just moved there to prevent them from getting flooded out.
The mayor should have been telling people to get to higher ground on Saturday morning when the roads were still passable, not late Sunday afternoon when people were already on their roofs waiting for help.
The convention center should have been prepared and opened Saturday morning, not late Sunday afternoon, and those parked 150 buses should have been used to help those in flood prone areas get to higher ground.
A lot of people just weren't able to leave. No car or too old and sick, etc. No place to go. From where I sit (mid-Atlantic area) it looks like Texas could have done a better job getting people out. Like setting up plenty of shelters inland in school houses, government buildings, community centers etc. and then providing thousands of school buses to transport the people. But maybe they've done the best they could. Hindsight is 20/20. This is the worst natural disaster I've seen in my lifetime. I think when it's all over it will be worse than Katrina. God help Texas.
A lot of people did leave - Transportation was available, the city staged busses they didn't use, the State had busses that Houston Leadership didn't want. Shelters were (and are) available. A mandatory Evacuation was un-necessary. Corpus Christi didn't have a Mandatory Evacuation, they called for a voluntary Evacuation with maps for routes out of town - there is a decreasing timeline when a Hurricane approaches.
Houston was told by Leadership to stay, and their exact words were "we know best". Over 30,000 people have been rescued so far. The Houston Leadership seems very overwhelmed and a bit rudderless - Fire Department, FEMA, Texas Task Form, Texas Emergency Services, US Coast Guard, National Guard, Texas Guard & Citizens are doing all they can to rescue people and get them to shelter. Houston Mayor was heard from this morning again after hours of MIA - so he appears to be fine. Loss of life appears low at this point - that's the good thing. I think that loss of life in the Harvey Landfall area is still at one person in a fire, but haven't checked this morning. Rockport/Port Aransas/Aransas Pass are in rubble - so that is an amazing record.
The population of Miami/Ft Lauderdale/West Palm Beach is about 6.7 million, and evacuating everyone is not an option. People would be stuck on I-95 and Turnpike going North, and worse, on Alligator Alley going West, which is completely exposed and elevated in the middle of the Everglades swamp. This is why they never recommend a mass-evacuation. You could order evacuations in some areas like Ft Lauderdale, but hurricanes can turn, like Andrew did when it his Miami/Homestead.
That's why they do it in stages, and the order for evacuation starts days before the hurricane arrives. The governor advised people to evacuate.
I've lived in Houston. Houston gets some crazy thunder/lightning storms with a lot of rain. A LOT of rain. What I noticed while living in Houston and going through these storms was that a LOT of areas flooded. All the time. Constantly. Every single time. Where I was staying, the house was up from the street on a small incline. Every single time it rained, that water came halfway up the driveway. The streets were flooded, the yards were flooded, all the neighbors yards were flooded, downtown was flooded...Houston has always had a problem with this.
So knowing that, why on earth would you tell people to stay when you know it's not a typical summer storm, it's a fricken hurricane? How could anyone be that stupid? It is much better to evacuate even if people would have been sitting in traffic for a bit. It's not like the meteorologists didn't mention this with enough time to get out before the hurricane hit.
I have also lived in Miami. I lived in Miami Beach during Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Always Miami Beach was the first advised to evacuate. (Never had mandatory although I think Wilma probably should have been just to be on the safe side.) Katrina was nothing. I had seen windier, rainier days when I lived in Seattle. Rita was nothing. Wilma, on the other hand, was something. It hit inland a little harder, I think, than the beach, but even on the beach while going through it, (my first year there, my first hurricane season experience ever), I thought that maybe officials were idiots for not telling us we had to evacuate. It was a little scary, and I was the only person looking forward to the hurricane simply because I love violent weather.
You have days to prepare. You have the weather report constantly talking about the "cone of death" and where it's projected to hit. And you always have advisories, and it's given in steps. It was always Miami Beach and other cities along the beaches that were advised to leave, first. Then you would have other parts of Miami advised to leave, if necessary. They would move east to west, advising in stages.
Houston should have been done the same way. Hurricane coming? Tell the low lying and coastal areas to evacuate, as the governor did. Then tell other areas to evacuate, and move on in steps. There's days of forecast, there's time to get people out.
The idea that "it's going to clog up traffic therefore don't do anything" is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Anyone who can needs to get out of Houston. The aftermath of this flood is going to be worse than anything we have seen so far. Polluted water is everywhere, infrastructure is gone, and we are going to see cholera, dengue fever, malaria and more. Transportation and logistics is seriously imperiled. There will be food shortages and critical lack of medical supplies and drugs. Crime and lawlessness will be rampant when the water recedes as desperate people seek out the things they need. Hording and price gouging will be the rule of commerce for weeks.
Longer term, this is the second "historic" flood in as many years. Aside from the fact it will take a decade to recover, it is clear that Houston has too much risk. Businesses and people are going to leave the area and not return.
Its safe to say they will NOT have malaria in Houston. Malaria requires certain types of mosquito which carry the parasite, and the parasites are simply not present in Houston, nor can they travel there.
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