I had relatives traveling west on highway 59 to my home town during that Marcella. A normal drive from Galveston to here would be about 3 hours and it took them 16 hours!
The police had all highway exits blocked off and you were not allowed to pull off to any convenience store so you went without food or water all that time. As you wrote, people died, dogs died, cars overheated and air conditioners stopped working. You had to stop and go to the bathroom in the dividing grass median in public view.
One of the most illogical things was that people were not allowed to leave the main highway even if they had friends/relatives on one of the sideroads!! This continued until you were a couple hundred miles away I guess, we never really knew how far it extended.
But - people were still polite and law abiding then - I don’t believe they will be the next time.
I didn't get that either, not letting people get off. Hwy. 45 is a few blocks from me and we went somewhere and I saw the exits blocked off and cars stopped and people sitting in their cars. They were not allowed to get off in Conroe. They could have gone east or west on non interstate roads if they could have gotten off.
That's pretty simple thinking, isn't it? Put millions on a road and don't let any get off - guess what, the line of cars isn't going to dissipate any time soon if you won't let them off. Somewhere inside me I'm thinking, “Let me get off this road - it's my car and it's leaving this highway, get the f...... barrels out of my way!” I don't know why some tough guy didn't throw those barrels in the ditch and take an exit. What was anyone going to do to him - come to think of it, I didn't see anyone around.
When you think about it, why didn't someone do that? Would we have enough “save ourselves” gumption to get the barrels out of the way to do what is best for us?