Posted 9/25/2005 03:13:00 PM by Douglas

Well it looks like Texas in general fared pretty well in this last round of Hurricanes, and besides sitting on the Beltway for nine hours on my way to West Texas only to give up and hunker down in Jersey Village, I must say that I am personally unscathed. It's pretty obvious that in the umbra of Katrina, a hurricane hitting the Texas coast didn't come as a surprise to anyone. Houston spent so much time focusing of the refugees from Louisiana that it would appear that their own evacuation planning went out the window with that last corn-dog they had in the freezer.

As I've ranted in the past regarding Katrina's issues, the probles begin and end with this statement: governments failed. Whether it was the post-storm aid at Katrina or the pre-storm evacuation of Houston, no one seems to have any clue as to what is going on. Sure, it's easy to point fingers and blame people on TV at the press conference, but that's their freakin' job! We don't elect these people for ribbon cutting ceremonies at the new park or for naming streets. We elect them and give them the authority to seize property and take people to jail because sometimes, that's what we need. Here are just a few examples of what I saw personally that should be addressed:

• Why the hell did Mayor Bill White call for the evacuation of Houston at 8 A.M. Thursday morning? Northern Galveston County and low-lying areas right on the water weren't called to be evacuated until Thursday at Noon, and when I was on the Beltway trying to get out, my route was slowed to about ½ a mile an hour by the massive influx of Houstonians, who undoubtedly live much higher above sea level than I do. Also, if the Mayor of the 4th largest city in the country going to call for an evacuation, why wouldn't the resources to establish the contra-flow lanes along I-45 and I-10 already be in place? He called for the evacuation, then put the plans to work to establish contra-flow along I-45 sometime after Noon on Thursday along I-45, and much later in the afternoon along I-10 West. Why wasn't this huge evacuation anticipated when, oh, I don't know, when he called for the fucking evacuation?
• On Friday morning, Rita was looking more and more like a non-event for Houston, and the freeways were a complete ghost town, yet the mayor was then telling us to "shelter in place." Why? You could have driven anywhere you wanted to go in and out of Houston in record time, yet we were told to "stay put," even though the first clouds of the storm were a good 12 hours away. Why?
• I was getting a little relieved when Rita's track was taking it out of the Galveston area, but I was still very worried about getting back into Galveston county after the storm passed. Was there going to be DPS enforcing the mandatory evacuation? Luckily I found the Leauge City office of Emergency Management's phone number on the web. It went unanswered on Thursday, but on Friday, I was able to call and speak to someone about returning after the storm. They didn't know. But then I asked if they had a recording line that had pertinent information like this that I could call to find out about updates to the situation in League City. The answer (and I'm quoting here), "Oh no, that would be too easy. We've got 30 people in here answering the phone." Even for inefficient and bureaucratic city government, this is unbelievable. A category 4 hurricane is headed right towards us (at that time) and instead of an $100 multi-line answering machine, 30 people are put in harms way to answer the same question all day. Why?

I think I could sit here and whine all day about this, but I don't much see the point. City, state, and county officials are going to stand around sucking each other's dicks and about what a great job they did, and at the end of the day, it was successful, but only because Rita changed direction in her last 24 hours before landfall. So instead of relying on luck, how 'bout we put some time and money on some emergency management planning instead of blind luck. Is that too much to ask?