Posted on 08/29/2017 12:40:16 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Of late, Houston mayor’s term is 4 years, with a limit of 2 terms. That means that a reasonably optimistic mayor will serve 8 years - and that means there’s a nontrivial 8% chance that a “once in a century” disaster will occur during his term, and a “once a decade” crisis will most likely happen at least once. With those odds in place, and the sociopolitical consequences of being unable to handle major problems, you’d think he’d make a high priority of preparing for likely crises (like those associated with being at the end of a major hurricane zone).
So yeah, I do expect there be a plan for vacating millions of people in short order, or encouraging viable “shelter in place” preparations & servicing those who can’t. And certainly there should be plans for much of the city being underwater when the whole place isn’t far above it (just 80’ above sea level).
People keep on electing these POS politicians who care less about the citizens that are their enormous responsibility. It is always those who are helpless and dependent who get hurt. I will NEVER forget Katrina where people walked off their jobs and this storm with the Seniors in wheelchairs in water. There is a special place in Hell for those who choose politics and selfishness before the lives of others.
Ah someone else gets it. Well said! It is not all or nothing. Just suggest evacuation of people in lower lying areas. This is not rocket science. Everyone in that area should know a bit about hurricanes and rainstorms and can decide whether they need to leave or not.
An evacuation would have been a catastrophe with a higher death rate than the hurricane.
We learned our lesson from Rita.
100 people died on the roads, and no one got anywhere. And that was with more lead time and about a million fewer people.
Exactly. Ever notice how Rat Mayors always think they’re on some global stage? Basic services get neglected.
Do you have some kind of transporter like in Star Trek.
I live here. Staying put was the right move.
The better move would be tearing down all the development along Buffalo Bayou, Addicks Reservoir, Barker Reservoir, Mayde Creek, and the Brazos.
That’s the problem here.
The entire damn city is a low-lying area.
Show of hands: Who lives in Houston Metro?
If you don’t, you don’t know the geography and you don’t know the road system. By the time the Eastern suburbs which got truly hammered, hit downtown, traffic would be stalled for three days and everyone would have drowned in their cars.
And where exactly are we getting the gas for this? We ran out of gas on Thursday night when everyone starting preparing for the storm (which we truly understood on Wednesday).
The Magic “D” stands for Dumb
The choice is not between (1) everyone trying to get out at once and (2) nobody leaving at all. The trick is to stage a controlled evacuation so as to get as many of the most vulnerable out as we can in the remaining time available.
You should look up the history of the evacuation for hurricane Rita. Thousands of cars stranded on highways that had become parking lots. If Rita had actually hit Houston, thousands would have died on those highways. There are 6.5 million in Harris county alone. 4 days prior, Harvey was forcasted as a weak tropical storm. By the time Harvey amounted to anything, evacuation of all but the coastal regions was out of the question. The Houston coastal regions did not get hit that bad.
Could you imagine the number of fatalities if people had evacuated? Harvey wasn’t even a hurricane until 12:00 PM Thursday. Thirty hours later it was a category 4.
How do you evacuate 6.5 million people in the greater Houston area? Where do they go?
Liberals live in the big cities in low-rent apartments and hovels. The conservatives live in the ‘burbs in houses with running water. /s
They go nowhere and die. They also block any means of assistance.
The call was correct.
Can I point out that the mayor of Houston is responsible for less than half the people impacted by this? And his population is the least likely to actually be able to evacuate since so much of the city relies on public transportation.
And frankly, it’s not Houston that really takes the brunt of this. You see the pictures of downtown Houston and 610 underwater, but that’s by design to a degree. Something has to flood. Better to happen where no one lives.
As PJ said, the freeways are designed to flood, because something has to flood. Rather the roads than the neighborhoods.
And that makes a full scale evacuation a suicide mission. I-10 with 10 inches of rain is a death trap.
The pictures you are seeing on tv are the suburbs. We took the brunt of this, because we build along the bayous and creeks. The areas around Barker Reservoir are not city of Houston. (At least a lot of it isn’t. The city limits get tricky there).
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