Posted 5/31/2006 05:46:00 PM by Douglas

I grew up in the sticks, so I never really understood the Houston/Dallas 'rivalary', if you can even call it that. The problem with a State like Texas, where its average resident has an ego bigger than their pickup, is that when two of the nation's top ten largest metropolitan areas are in one state (and both refuse to admit the existence of San Antonio), there's bound to be some bad blood. So it's no surprise that Dallas wants to be a total douche bag when it comes to the pending hurricane evacuation of the Gulf Coast.

With hurricane season bearing down, a crucial part of the state's elaborate disaster evacuation plan has already hit gridlock: Dallas is balking at a request to harbor as many as 40,000 of Harris County's neediest evacuees.

Well really, who can blame them? This has been hotly debated, but Houston's murder rate has definitely shot up (no pun intended [ok, a little bit it was]) since Katrina gave us the worst New Orleans had to offer. So what's their excuse?

"It would be a little bit of a chaotic situation if we got 40,000 people," Shaw said. "We are not going to be able to house anywhere near a 40,000 special needs population."

The state can't make any city take special needs evacuees, meaning if "Big D" ultimately refuses to open shelters for them, they'll have to be transported even farther away to wait out the storm.

The American Red Cross has said it can provide shelters for 15,000 people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and surrounding counties.

As part of that total, Dallas could handle up to 6,000 evacuees by opening Reunion Arena and the convention center, said Shaw, who also estimated that Fort Worth could open shelters for 3,000.

Wow, that's just amazing. The article goes on to say that Houston sheltered over 27,000 people after Katrina, with little notice, but Metro Dallas and its almost Six Million residents could only endure 9,000? A good tornado through Hurst-Euless-Bedford and on through the trailer parks of Keller would create many more than 9,000 homeless in the D-FW area, so what, pray tell, would Dallas have these people do then? Just don't send 'em to Houston, cause we're full

Fucking snobs.