Texas officials: dumbasses (re: Rita)

[T Roosevelt]

Having worked in the engineering private sector interfacing with emergency management, and having spent the past few years working on my PhD in engineering studying hurricane evacuation, it looks as though the Rita evacuation is a total clusterf*%k, no thanks to, well, pretty much everybody involved. There's so much in this Houston Chronicle article:

For motorists, all roads lead to frustration
By MATT STILES and R.G. RATCLIFFE
Sept. 23, 2005, 6:42AM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Thousands of furious evacuees sweltering for hours on traffic-choked freeways Thursday put a stain on what had been a generally successful response by state and local governments faced with back-to-back weather emergencies in Texas.

"This was not in the plan," County Judge Robert Eckels said, turning away from the lectern after a news briefing dominated by questions about the gridlock that resulted from the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita.

For the most part, the officials didn't offer much analysis of what might have gone wrong. They focused instead on the scramble to keep thousands of motorists from what Mayor Bill White called a potential "death trap" should the storm strike while they were stranded on the road.

But Brazoria County Judge John Willy criticized other local officials for calling for voluntary evacuation when Brazoria was under a mandatory evacuation order. That, he said, put a lot of cars on the dedicated evacuation routes and prevented people from the south from getting out.

Gov. Rick Perry said state and local officials are trying to move more than 1.5 million people out of the storm's path, and said that despite the traffic snags, he was certain that anyone who wants to evacuate will be out of the Gulf Coast area before tropical storm winds begin to kick up at midmorning today.

"If you're in the storm's path, you need to git gone. You need to be on the road, moving out of the storm's path," he said. "Those few hardheaded ones out there who are going to ride this thing out, don't expect there to be a lot of support in those areas."

"This evacuation is historic in its proportion," Perry said.

Massive undertaking
The observation by Perry and others - that problems were inevitable in any endeavor to move more than a million people over a few routes under an emergency time frame - didn't stop criticism about how officials planned for, and implemented, the exodus.

...

Jack Colley, coordinator of the state emergency operations center, said the state evacuation plan included getting fuel to stranded motorists, but that the number of people coming out of Houston was a surprise.

"The number of people, the amount of cars, the amount of compliance with this (evacuation order), there's some things you can predict and some things you can't, that are unpredictable," Colley said. "We are compensating. They may run out of gas, but we're going to get them gas."

Colley said it is too early to tell if mistakes were made in the planning and execution of the evacuation.

"The key is to follow the plan that we have, and I think the plan fits the storm," Colley said. "Right now the goal is not to leave anyone behind."

...

First of all, there was no reason to call for everybody to leave. Some people along the coast were at risk, but not ALL of them. I understand that with the recent experience with Katrina, people are highly sensitive to Rita, but everybody seems to forget that a major reason for New Orleans' destruction was flooding from broken levees. Houston is not the same as New Orleans. (I've been to both - Houston's a toilet compared to beautiful NO).

Second, Houston has 2 million people. Say half evacuate (from officials' statements, this could have been expected). Say they double up in vehicles, so roughly 500k vehicles are trying to leave. Highways have limited capacities - here's some simple math: 2200 vehicles per hour per lane (vphpl), 3 lanes out from Houston (no contraflow), 500k vehicles. Basic math: 500000/(3*2200) = 76 hours, or just over 3 DAYS. That's gridlock conditions for 3 days, assuming no incidents (such as the the tragic bus explosion), that shut down traffic lanes. Fortunately, that bus incident occurred near Dallas. Closer to Houston and traffic would be much, much worse.

Finally, where are the National Guard? They should be in place helping to direct traffic. There simply aren't enough Texas State Troopers to manage this volume of vehicles trying to leave Houston (not to mention Galveston and Port Arthur).

As for the contraflowing of the freeway, that is a difficult undertaking under the best of conditions, with adequate pre-planning and resources. There are many issues - where to place personnel, how to manage freeway ramps, do you maintain return lanes for emergency services, what about potential for head-on collisions. These are just a few of the issues. Do I fault Texas officials for not doing it in this instance? No, unless they already had the plans prepared. If they did, then they are clearly at fault. If they didn't, then they should have, since contraflow has the potential (not in all cases) of improving evacuation clearance times.

[malaise]

1. I've been waiting all morning for an engineer to weigh in

on this total and unnecessary chaos. One more thing would engineers trained in emergency management allow elderly people with oxygen to be evacuated on buses with hydraulic brakes moving through highways in crawling traffic.
They are clueless.
edit add word.

[expatriot]

2. There's that "No one predicted this" bullshit again.

Okay, we as a nation need to re-evaluate this whole "Don't prepare for the worst because it is unpredictable" bullshit.

[malaise]

3. So why don't they simply

borrow the Cuban model and adapt it for coastal cities in the US. Fugg - the Cubans moved 1.2 million people last year with no problems. Why - trained people coordinate and within communities people are trained for disasters.

[Corgigal]

4. number of people coming out of Houston was a surprise

Thought the same damn thing. You get officials on TeeVee telling everyone get out and run for your lives.

They do as directed and then the same officials state the above. It's crap.

[Oreo]

5. I saw somewhere that the acting FEMA head

said something like "they should have left earlier so they wouldn't have been caught in traffic." Did I see it wrong? This is yet another example of how clueless these people are

[DBoon]

8. And how many had to stay because their employers said to?

Would you risk losing your job to evacuate early?

Do you want to be unemployed in the state that is most hostile to the unemployed?

[Sub Atomic]

6. "The key is to follow the plan that we have"

Not the plan we wished we had.

[Fuzz]

7. Our roads and infrastructure are just not designed for this type of thing.

Can't be done. Period. You can't expect everyone to get in their own cars and just get up and leave all at once from any metro area. Hell, most places can't handle rush hour very well with everyone in their own car.

Expect to hear the do it yourselfers start talking about just walking to safety if the roads are packed and all the other brilliant ideas from people who are who are 1,000 miles away preceded by a 'what I would've done is'.

[Celebration]

9. Hard to pin on Nagin

But I am sure Clinton could have done better planning for this!! These problems should have been addressed then before we had all the distractions and planning associated with 911!!!!

:eyes:

How long will it take us to hear the above from some idiot on Hardball? Last week I actually heard someone from the NY Times trying to pin the FEMA disaster in NO on Clinton!!

[T Roosevelt]

10. Not much can be pinned on Nagin

He did what he could with the resources he had available to him. Can't fault him for not having more - that's where state and federal governments come in.

As for Clinton, the way FEMA was confgured during his administration would clearly have provided better action/reaction to both Katrina and Rita.