Posted 9/29/2005 05:05:00 PM by Douglas

The storm that didn't come: 107 (so far) dead in Houston from the storm that didn't come. So far, One Hundred and Seven peopled died from evacuation.

A 2-year-old Houston girl crushed beneath the wheels of a pickup; a Sugar Land man and his two young children fatally pitched from their overturning car near Madisonville; a 92-year-old La Marque woman dead after losing consciousness while stuck in highway gridlock — Hurricane Rita's tales of sorrow rolled in as the death toll climbed.

A Chronicle survey of Houston-area counties and those along major evacuation routes to the north and west indicates that at least 107 people were killed by last week's hurricane or died in accidents or from health problems associated with the evacuation of 2.5 million people from their homes.

It's going to take a long time for me to not be pissed off about this, and it's certainly not going to go away as the death toll continues to mount.

First off, no one is going to say that evacuating the country's 4th largest city would be easy. But an evacuation plan for that many people must consist of something besides run! Because that's all we got at 8 A.M. on Thursday morning, and the roadways, all off the roadways, responded accordingly.

Also, if you don't have a plan to get people out, why call for the evacuation? Where did the surprise from the sudden traffic come from? The mayor tells people to leave the city, and people (try to) leave the city. Is it any wonder that every road out of town was choked with overheating cars?

Look, I'm not an emergency management planner, nor do I draw their government paycheck. But I would think that those that do would have put slightly more thought into the evacuation of the 4th largest city in America than I have. 'Cause I'm just some dumb schmoe that got caught in traffic trying to flee my low lying coastal community.