nope, not really.

please tell me the last time an evacuation this big has taken place in such a short time period? oh wait, you can't, because it's never happened before.

nothing will ever be perfect, people will always complain.

 

^^ True

When do we get gas again? Maybe Monday? I dont even know any gas stations around me that have gas or are even open.

 

who knows? a lot depends on what rita does. all the gulf coast refineries have shutdown and after Rita moves out it will take a while to get production started....if they even have crude to refine since all the production platforms in the gulf have also shutdown and many have never restarted since being damaged by katrina

 

would it be okay to leave now? or no? since the freeways are pretty much cleared up, im thinking about leaving to san antonio...

 

Not just that but also I've read and heard that one of the mian reasons for not opening the inbound side to outbound traffic was so that emmergency vehicles and supplies are still able to get into the area easily. I know this is especially true for 290 because a lot of FEMA's manpower is here in Austin right now.

 

My point is this....

I live in central Alabama and when there is an evac order given for the Alabama coast area the state shuts down the southbound lanes of the interstate up to about Montgomery right off the bat to get the people out and away from the coast. Do they sit in traffic? Hell ya, cause I-65 is only 2 lanes in each direction but they get out of the coast area quickly.

I would think after the last storm they would have been much more willing to take the drastic measures to evacuate the area given the number of people and how fast they needed to be out.

As for the gas thing - who knows if there is anything that could have been done to make that better? The stations can only hold so much in thier tanks and people were ALL getting gas at basically the same time. Could they even get more gas in with the evac and the current state of gas?

I just feel there was some really poor decisions made and I am just not seeing how waiting SO LONG to open the other side of the freeway seemed logical to anyone.

 

Now that I will buy as a partially good reason. I have a feeling 2 of those what appeared to be 5 or 6 lanes on that side would have done FEMA just lovely. So it takes them a while to put out cones and get it opened up - I bet anyone who sat in it for 12 - 15 hours would think it would have been worth it only taking 6. Would they have still complained - certainly. But it would have been more of an effort to help those trying to leave IMHO if they had done it.

It's done now and I just hope that they can learn something and try to get some kind of plan in place for this possibility if it comes again. Looks like it is pretty likely to happen again with the way the season has gone thus far.

 

Just checkin in with the rest of the H-town G's.....been busy buying supplies and hunkering down here at my parents house in SugarLand....Hey Cato...margaRITA party??? Hahahahah....nyckid...are you staying here too?...holla at me....At any rate hope everyone is safe whoever made it out of the city with the traffic and all......I hope ya'lls G's are safe too...unfortunately for me I get to park mine outside along with my dad's expedition...hopefully his SUV will block some flying debris....hahaha...It looks however that the wind is not gonna be "too" bad since it's moving eastbound...like i thought before it won't be as bad....lets hope it stays that way....

 

waddup ryan, yeah im glad i stayed... lol, its like nothing outside, hahaha... ****

 

this hurricane is starting to **** me off it's so wimpy

 

Yeah, I expected a real hurricane, not some wimpy breeze. I lived in an apartment (2nd floor) when Alicea hit Houston with full force in 1983. That was a fun party. Now that I own my home, I have a different perspective on hurricane damage. Rita was a huge let-down/relief due to it's last minute jog towards Lousy State(Lousiana)....

 

the only problem I had was that power went out about 1 am last night/morning. it came back on about 7:30 am...any power problems on your side of SL ?

 

we had a power outage her in Katy for about 30 seconds last night around 11 pm.........it may have gone off early this morning but i was sleeping, but other than that....only a stiff breeze with a few gusts, no rain (the ground is wet, thats about it)........i feel disappointment and relief as well..........worked on getting ready for 2 days......it was a lot of stress that i didnt recognize as stress until last night......it was hard to do anything else for very long without thinking "oh yeah, i need to do this to get ready for the hurricane"...........or sit and watch the news to see where Rita was heading, wondering if i made the right decicion to stay and not evacuate.......now comes the work of putting everything back the way it was.....damn tape on the windows, will have to use googone and wash every window!

oh yeah i also have to go get my G from my buddies garage...........

 

As far as I can tell, we never lost power. I just got back from a drive around our neighborhood. A few fences were blown down, encountered a couple of trees that were snapped. Other than that, everything looked OK. Now Roger and I have to take that damn tape off our windows! Since I bet you put it up, have Flo take it down! Paint thinner cleans the adhesive off pretty good, Goo-Gone is good also. In my brilliance to protect our property, I took my Dish 500 antenna off the roof. Now I'm stuck with local TV only. Sob!

 

this is flo....

"have Flo take it down! "

SAY WAAAAAAAAAHHHH ???? I KNOW YOU ARE NOT TALKING TO ME THAT WAY "CATO"....
YOU DO NOT WANT ME TO START WITH YOU......