If Ike had gone a little farther to the west, the winds and flooding would probably have been significantly worse for Houston. Makes you wonder what the 1900 Galveston hurricane was really like, esp. since they didn’t have a sea wall back then.
I believe most people are getting smart...With a few exceptions, people are getting out of Dodge if it ever came to it...
Galveston took the worst hit it could take with the preparations it has been putting into place since 1900...
The Galveston causeway has been given a faceligft and more capability to dump that islands population in very short order...The state and local Galveston and Houston planners have a good evacuation plan in place to keep the traffic flowing north and away from becoming too much of a burden on the population not evacuating inland...
We were right on the edge based upon our Zip Code to evacuate for Ike...So we were kinda screwed...But we were prepared...If it all went up, we had our “very few, and necessary” things ready, and a vehicle staged in a protective situation within walking distance to bug out if it just got too bad...But it didn’t...Within a few days I was getting ready for work in the dark, and heading to work...Gas prices were thru the roof, but at least we could still afford it...
We just played like we were camping out, the weather after the storm was actually, and strangely cooler than had been expected, and the generator we had was good for small electronic usage and charging, and a fan at night to keep the air moving over us...
It just amazed me how many people weren’t even prepared for a minor inconvienience...Like no power for so long...