...outsiders really have no concept of how large this state is, and even more they have no concept of how large our cities are. The Houston metropolitan area would fill up most of the state of Connecticut, and at 6.5 million people, there are more than 30 states with smaller populations.
Think about that for a moment: getting the population of the entire state of Missouri out of an area the size of Connecticut in 48 hours. You can't travel south (Gulf), southeast (Gulf), or southwest (storm making landfall). You have, at most, five major roads capable of bearing heavy traffic to the cities with the capacity to take in refugees. The two nearest cities with significant evacuee capacity and experience are Austin, around 150 miles away down a lot of four-lane divided state highway, and San Antonio, about 200 miles from downtown on the Interstate. Initiating a mass evacuation on that scale in under two days is just not possible. The laws of math and traffic deny it, even with contraflow.
A 100 year flood is an event that has a 1% chance of happening within a given year. A 500 year flood is one that has a 0.2% chance of happening in a given year. They probably should have named them something less confusing. Most people think a 100 year flood happens once every 100 years since the name somewhat implies it.
I heard them saying:I still hear talking heads saying, "Houston should have been evacuated."
Heard about Houston
Heard about Detroit
Heard about Pittsburgh P.A.
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody see you up there
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
To last a couple of days
...
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around
Evacuating a major city would not be an easy matter. Even if it is somehow done, and done fairly well, I suspect that some people would still find fault.I still hear talking heads saying, "Houston should have been evacuated." Here is a blog post that does a good job of explaining why that would have been a very bad idea:[/URL]
Obviously you did not click on it.
Human's ability to do that is about 0%!. I used to walk down 11 floors with 1200 people in the building during a fire drill. You know how well that works? With zero plans(at least the evacuation team told folks where to go)?I still hear talking heads saying, "Houston should have been evacuated." Here is a blog post that does a good job of explaining why that would have been a very bad idea:
People Need To Stop Yelling at Houston
I do think people were caught off guard by the heaviest rain that occurred overnight Sunday, so they were surprised when they woke up Monday morning.
Clearly, many places in Houston did not flood and if the Sunday rains happened during the day folks might have evacuated to a dry area of Houston before underpasses were flooded.
To answer the question Potential evacuation freeways are I -10 to San Antonio, US 290/Tx 6 to Austin/Waco, I 45 to Dallas and i69/US 59 to Texarkana. I 10 east is to close to the coast, and US 59/I 69 sw of town goes thru evacuation areas also going thru Victoria. Note that in addition to folks from Houston, you do potentially need to evacuate the Coast from South of Corpus to Houston. (Which is where the storm came ashore as a cat 4).Evacuating 6.5 million people is tough!
Not a traffic engineer or a transportation expert, so I have to look up some numbers. The theoretical maximum saturation flow rate per lane is 1,900 vehicles per hour. That's about 2 seconds per vehicle, so that's about right. That's assuming no accidents, no cars breaking down, no running out of gas.
For a 4-lane freeway leading out of town, the capacity is 1900 x 24 x 4 = 182,400 cars/day.
Now, if we pack 6 persons in a car, moving 6.5 million people still need 1.1 million cars. It's likely more than 2 million cars.
Now, how many freeways leading out of town going north or west?
I did not follow the news during Rita, but just now looked at some videos of the evacuation on youtube.
It seems to me one would be better off taking some country roads if available, rather than the congested freeways. Once on the freeways, if you are stuck, there's nowhere to go. The reporters were talking about people taking 15 hours to go 13 miles.
FM 2978 closed due to possible damage to Spring Creek Bridge - The Courier
This is a big deal for locals. 2978 bridge over Spring Creek may have been damaged.
I did not follow the news during Rita, but just now looked at some videos of the evacuation on youtube.
It seems to me one would be better off taking some country roads if available, rather than the congested freeways. Once on the freeways, if you are stuck, there's nowhere to go. The reporters were talking about people taking 15 hours to go 13 miles.
OK, I'm convinced that evacuating millions of people by car from an area like a Houston is not practical. Let's dig down. My understanding is that the city, always prone to flooding, has expanded greatly in recent years. Is Houston too big to be safe? Because this will happen again. As sea levels rise, cities that have never flooded will do so.
Yeah, that is a good idea...but it didn't work either...
... It took us 4 1/2 hours to go about 4 miles. I drove one car and DH the other. We realized that it wasn't going to work. We would run out of gas long before we got out of town. Finally we reluctantly turned around and went back home (back home in 10 minutes).
Good for y'all. Did power stay on? Water from the tap OK? We didn't even fill up 32-gal rubbermaid brute containers w/lids in our showers like we usually do. These contain our hurricane supplies when not filled with water. The lids let us continue to shower and keep the water potable.We sure did pick a great time to be in Houston.
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So far, we've survived Harvey. We're now scheduled to fly out Sunday, after our Wednesday flight was cancelled. I think we'll be able to drive out Wednesday as our food supply is getting low (remember, newly purchased home). We'd still be okay because my son has two 30-day emergency food buckets he moved from Maryland.
Been there, done that. As I mentioned in an earlier post, for hurricane Rita, we tried to evacuate and sat on freeway for ~10 hours and I don't think we moved 5 miles. We gave up, turned around and we were home in 20 mins. Then we watched the evacuation on TV.We thought that would be less congested. It took us 4 1/2 hours to go about 4 miles.
We would run out of gas long before we got out of town. Finally we reluctantly turned around and went back home (back home in 10 minutes).