Another crew of boats is apparently leaving here for Houston around noon today. I’ve seen several posts about it on FB.
Sigh. My DH plans to fly to San Antonio tomorrow. Not at all surprised.
There’s a really good Twitter thread going around about why they didn’t evacuate.
The short version: the roads that people were stuck on during Rita for 24+ hours are now several feet below water.
The mayor’s decision probably saved tens of thousands of lives. Those people would have drowned on the freeway.
ETA: Infrastructure development is a wonderful idea. But considering that it’s crumbling basically everywhere, there isn’t the political will to dump a trillion dollars in.
Has a city the size of Houston ever been evacuated in advance of a disaster? I can’t think of one off the top of my head. I mean, what cities are even comparable? I don’t recall any if the 10 largest cites ever doing it.
So don’t feel too confident that wherever you live could do a better job.
Thank you so much to all who are offering encouragement and talking about ways to help. To those who would like to second guess our emergency officials, if you know how to predict a storm of this magnitude (keeping in mind that the National Weather Service, NOAA, etc. did not), please come and help.
I live in the Meyerland area… If you saw the pictures of the people being rescued from the apartments along Brays Bayou via baskets and harnesses hanging from helicopters, that’s less than 2 miles from my house. We did not take on water, but it was literally at our doorstep. We’ve lived here 40 years, and that is substantially higher than it’s ever been.
Houston is drained and protected from flooding by an intricate series of bayous, reservoirs and streets that are designed to carry water. The areas that flood are not just the"low-lying areas". It depends on where the rain is. And, it’s not necessarily rain at the house that floods. If there is a lot of rain west of Houston on the Brays/Keegan watershed, I am much more at risk of flooding here in Meyerland from a given amount of rain, than if the rain started here. It’s complicated, and hard to predict. We were warned about extensive rains. Many people who live in Meyerland houses that flooded previously did evacuate. They don’t know when they will get to come back, and they are trying on social media to find out if they have anything to come back to. Those of us who have never flooded followed the suggestions of our experts and stayed put to allow the coastal evacuation. We prepared to be stuck in our houses for days, possibly without power and water. To suggest that our officials and our citizens ignored this risk is just plain wrong.
But yes, we do know. Perhaps new freeways would not be helpful, but they know exactly why Houston is prone to flooding. Massive development in floodplains, wetlands and prairies that were supposed to absorb water is nuts. Houston has been hit with six “hundred year storms” since 1989. Are these floods are going to magically stop, or with the same conditions, won’t they continue?
Coworker’s wife just called him. Apparently Costco, where the Cajun Navy is gathering, is chock full of people getting water and supplies to donate.
I don’t think anyone is second guessing the National Weather Service, the storm went exactly where they said it would, didn’t it? And the emergency officials aren’t responsible for ordering an evacuation.
But reading about Houston’s prior floods makes this all seem sadly predictable. It sounds like much of the credit for this one goes to the developers and the city officials that encouraged and allowed the development in the floodplains. I wonder if anything will be done to prevent this in the future.
"Sure, that would be a mess if you waited till the last minute to tell everyone to leave. But does that mean it is impossible for Houston to ever evacuate? If you can’t evacuate during a storm with this much notice, then when can you? "
Reality is that mass scale evacuation is impossible for a lot of areas, not just Houston. Look at everyday traffic in a lot of places - LA, NYC metro area. Now, imagine everyone trying to leave? Our infrastructure in this country is crap. No adequate rail system. We’re a nation of cars with a highway system dated and insufficient to handle them. When disaster strikes, it is just that - a disaster. And despite what some quarters try to deny, climate change is real and we’ll see more extreme weather.
@busdriver11 Since you’re a pilot, buy yourself a small plane.
"They hope to one day be able to pinpoint, to the neighborhood or block, where the storm will be. "
As cool as that sounds, I’ll believe it when I see it. Mother Nature has a way of being unpredictable and chaotic.
They are working on the underlying issues. There are massive projects (www.projectbrays.org) in progress to reduce flooding, but they are in part federal partnerships and dependent on federal funding. They also take time. Building codes are changing, with requirements for elevated houses with flow-through foundations, storm water retention, and similar things that will help. We would most likely have to elevate our house if we wanted to do any substantial renovation. (After this, I may be looking for a highrise condo, except those have their own safety risks.) So, we are doing things to help the problem. There is research going on to help understand and mitigate the situation. But, people want to live in Houston Houston was growing at a massive rate when we arrived in 1976, and that growth continues. And, we aren’t the only place that has turned prairies and farms into planned subdivsions. It takes time to understand the impact of that growth rate and figure out how to fix the problems. I don’t deny that it hasn’t happened as fast as it should have. They’ve been promising our area that Brays Bayou would be improved for years,and it’s not moving fast enough. Life is not without risks, be they hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, tornadoes or our own ignorance and bad judgement. We just try to understand and mitigate those risks as we can.
Did anyone else catch the CBS Sunday Morning News yesterday? There was a segment about the Dutch and water management showing their efforts to prepare for ocean storms and prevent water disasters.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sea-change-how-the-dutch-confront-the-rise-of-the-oceans-2/
The segment, and the timing of its broadcast, were very interesting.
Now if we could just get @bjkmom elected Queen of the Universe so that she can expand funding for this type of research.
@jym626 San Antonio is dry right now with only a 20 percent chance of rain tomorrow. He should be fine.
I understand what you’re saying, @MOM2TX. But as far as understanding and mitigating the risks, it sounds like they didn’t, and that they just followed the money. Perhaps what people have been writing is unfair or inaccurate. But in my opinion, it doesn’t matter if people want to live somewhere…if the city government knows it’s a risk to those who build there and others off the property, they don’t get to build. You should see the impossibility of building in wetlands or floodplains in Seattle, it isn’t going to happen.
There aren’t many people left that are claiming that climate change isn’t happening, but apparently there still are some.
Now I’ll stop posting about this. I don’t want to aggravate people who are suffering, and the time for figuring out what the problem was will be for the future. I just can’t comprehend a good enough reason, if you know your city is impossible to evacuate even when you have several days notice, why you wouldn’t do everything possible to prevent flooding and disaster. My heart is with the people in Houston.
Thanks, @jazzymom . I am guessing many of the attendees at the conference was canceled which means when he shows up they’ll try to dump more responsibility on him for the upcoming year. Double sigh.
The scenes from Houston are heart-wrenching and after Katrina which you thought might have a been a once in your lifetime sight…Th NYTIMES just last week had a huge article on what would happen if Hurricane Andrew were to hit Southern Florida again as it is the 25th anniversary of that devastating storm. While lessons were learned in rebuilding Miami as far as building codes and presumably storm drainage, look at how the population in that affected area has multiplied in the 25 years with massive high rises and more.
There’s nothing that can be done in a matter of days other than evacuate. See my previous post about that.
Even IF you evacuate- where are you supposed to go? Shelters camt accommodate millions, not everyone has someone who can take them in, and even fewer can just afford accommodations.
Again, local officials KNOW what is wrong and how to fix it but they don’t have the money to do so.
@MOM2TX - thank you for your posts. They’re informative and instructive. I’ve been thinking about the evacuate-or-not-evacuate-Houston question, and you’ve given me a lot of food for thought.
I will add, that with climate change, weather is expected to become more extreme. For all we know, this is the new normal for Texas - and the country as a whole. The governor of Texas is said to be a climate change skeptic, but I would think that rational, reasonable minds will prevail and that we as a nation start thinking of infrastructure and growth with climate change firmly in mind.
From what I have read, this is a 1,000 year flood. Should all infrastructure in the US be built to 1,000 year flood standards? Before we went down that route I think it would make more sense to ask if there are areas where multitudes of people simply shouldn’t live.
Late to this discussion again. About the evacuations: I, too, recall that during the evacuation for Rita many people died in car wrecks. The mayor wanted to avoid that. Plus, there has been some uncertainty about where this storm would sit. We knew it was going to hit hard and sit somewhere, even go back out, pick up some more water and sit some more. Sit and rain.
Originally it looked like there was a possibility it would sit near SA so people here went out and stocked up on water, beer, and snacks. Then it didn’t sit here, it stayed north and east of here instead. We haven’t had that much rain and at this moment our skies are pretty clear. It has been a developing situation.
It’s not just the traffic on the roads that would be a problem with the evacuation-- and by the way, people who evacuated for Rita reported that it took 14 hours to drive what normally takes 3-4 hours, and the freeways in Houston are designed to flood. What happens when you’re still stuck in the traffic jam and suddenly the road is covered with five feet of water?
It’s the infrastructure for the trip and the destination. There wouldn’t be enough gas along the way. There wouldn’t be enough food along the way. The Houston metro area has about six million people. Say they issued an evacuation order, and four million people left. Where would you put them? Some have dogs and cats. Some are disabled and need facilities that work for disabled people. Many are poor and couldn’t afford replacement food, lodging, clothing. Where would they all go?