Getting out of Houston

I spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning with 1.5 million of my closest friends getting out of Houston, TX. I was one of those people you saw on the news sitting in the traffic jams heading out of the hurricane evacuation area. I delivered in Houston on Wednesday afternoon and dispatch sent me north out of town towards Omaha, NE. I left Houston at 4:30 in the afternoon and had made it North 80 miles by midnight when I finally had to get some sleep. After a few hours sleep I threaded my way back into the traffic stream and continued on North on US 59. When daylight broke on Thursday morning the scene reminded me of something out of theGrapes of Wrath , people pulled off onto the shoulder of the road sleeping on their cars, lines at gas stations and any parking lot jammed full of evacuees. I finally made it to Corrigan, TX by mid-morning where most of the back up was caused by a stop light in the middle of this little town. The highway patrol had finally shown up and were waving traffic through the signal as fast as they could. Once I made it through the light things improved greatly and I was able to get on out TX by afternoon. Its sad to think that this one signal light was screwing up the whole works and causing a backup all the way back into Houston, great planning TXDOT!

It was interesting to see what people considered important enough to take with them when they were getting out of the way of Rita. Of course they had their families and pets, saw a lot of dogs and cats loaded into cars and pickups, but I also saw many people towing their boats and ATV’s. I even saw one guy who had shrink wrapped his big screen TV and loaded it in the back of his pickup and was taking it with him. Many had their pickups full of water, food, generators and cans of gas. I guess everyone has different priorities.

For the most part people were patient and seemed to be keeping a good attitude even after spending many hours stuck in the traffic. Of course you have your idiots who want to race around and try to get that one car length ahead of everyone else, but for the most part people were pretty courteous. I still do not know where all of these people expected to go. It seemed to many that so many were just going and really had no plan. I saw many heading into the Lufkin area which had set up shelters but they were going to fill up quickly. I saw many heading on out of state into Oklahoma.

I applaud the people stuck in this traffic jam, so many never expected to be stuck on the road for so long. I feel lucky in having a place to sleep and food to eat in the truck. So many were just parked sleeping in or on their cars or in lawn chairs on the side of the road. I saw many stopping to help others that had broke down or run out of gas. The whole time I didn’t see anything that you could call road rage, although conditions were bad enough that you would expect to see it.

I am hearing that the levies are starting to fail in New Orleans and the floods are coming back. The ninth ward is starting to re-flood and things are just getting worse. It looks like all the work put in in the last few weeks may have been for naught. Rita is expected to hit East Texas overnight as a category 4 hurricane. Rita may cause even more damage than Katrina, she is heading into areas with even more population and industry. I have heard that the amount of insured property in Ritas’ path is in the Trillions of dollars. I am afraid of what this may do to our Nation as a whole. How much can we afford to lose. Maybe its time that we took a serious look at our own infrastructure and quit trying to run things all over the world. We are going to need every extra penny here at home and not being spent in places like Iraq, I have always been a supporter of Iraqi freedom but they are going to have to take care of their own problems and take responsibility for their own country because we need to be taking care of things here at home.