Posted on 08/28/2017 9:52:23 AM PDT by Enlightened1
HOUSTON—A split between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner over whether the metropolis should have been evacuated is raising questions about officials’ response to damaging floodwaters as a catastrophe continues to engulf the region.
Mr. Turner, a Democrat, and other local officials urged residents to stay in their homes as Hurricane Harvey, which has since downgraded to a tropical storm, approached Houston on Friday.
But at a Friday news conference, Gov. Abbott, a Republican, suggested otherwise. “Even if an evacuation order hasn’t been issued by your local official, if you’re in an area between Corpus Christi and Houston, you need to strongly consider evacuating.”
By Sunday, the storm had poured as much as 24 inches of rain in 24 hours onto areas that had been soaked the previous day. Five fatalities have been reported in the Houston area, according to the National Weather Service, though Mr. Turner said Sunday that only one in the city was confirmed so far as storm-related. More than 3,000 water rescues had been performed by Sunday afternoon, officials said.
The offices of Messrs. Turner and Abbott didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
They should have done a staged evacuation, 3 days before move out those in low lying areas subject to flooding, next day infirm or vulnerable. Then sections at a time.
I live in sw Florida...there are areas here that flood all the time...these people know when to leave and when to stay..
the problem in Huston is may places flooded that have never flooded in there life time ..
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3581197/posts
Dear Lester Holt and any other newscaster that feels the need to criticize our governor and/or mayors:
We are a big, big city. We have twice as many people in Houston than you have in Manhattan. We are 2200 square miles big. We are experiencing what could possibly be the worse storm in history. Our roads are flooded, our houses are under siege and there is no end in sight for the next couple of days. We don’t need you or any other liberal newscaster coming down here to try to stir things up. Evacuation decisions were made to try to keep the roads open for coastal residents who had to evacuate. With this historic flooding, Texans are bringing their boats into the city to help get fellow Texans to safety. We aren’t looking to affix blame, we are trying to survive and help one another. If you aren’t here to help, get the hell out. We don’t need your petty, snarky comments meant to sow seeds of division. We don’t operate that way down here and we don’t like people that do.
Sincerely,
The Great State of Texas and Houstonians
She said it all.. get your wallet out and send some money..
Smart! No matter what party the mayor is, or whether he ordered evacuations or not, he’s going to get slammed. That is normal. Maybe he should have encouraged those in areas sure to flood to leave, but I’m not going to second guess him now. Clearly, he’s not Ray Nagin.
Houston is in a pickle right now so I’m disinclined to pile on. Let’s just pray the situation with the bayous and reservoirs causes no further disaster.
Yep, you can’t evacuate millions of people unless you have a place to put them. I didn’t evacuate and am dry (so far). I’m sure a lot of people that live in low lying areas did evacuate (I know a few who did). They are now issuing mandatory evacuations for areas south of me due to Brazos River cresting.
So try to keep off roads during rainstorms !
Don’t streets in most subdivisions set below the homes they run in front of?
Thus streets are part of the drainage plan.
In the age of cell phones and the internet there’s no such thing as a “staged evacuation” anymore. That’s one of the things they learned with Rita. As soon as the announcements are made for the first stage of the evacuation, everyone in EVERY evacuation area — along with a lot of people who would be better off staying in place — leaves their home to get on the road as fast as they can.
Many downtown businesses will release their employees by 2:00PM if there is a forecast of heavy sustained rain.
Do people remember the rainstorm during the NBA playoffs a year ago? People who left the Toyota Center after the Rockets/Warriors game were stuck overnight on the freeways.
Houston knows what happens when it rains here, but NOBODY has experience managing the fallout of a Category 4 hurricane that stalls outside your city for two days and throws the "dirty side" rains at you non-stop.
-PJ
I was in Rita and my wife and I evacuated about 4am the day before.
It took us about twelve hours to go to her sons home in the DFW area.
Glad you are safe and okay.
You can’t evacuate an entire city with that kind of population. It has to happen in stages ... vulnerable citizens (ill, elderly, etc) in low lying areas first. Then all citizens from low areas. Then next lowest, etc. Any areas that are not prone to flooding do not have priority. That’s the way it should work. But you absolutely can not evacuate that entire metropolis ... it’s not possible.
My brother took dad down to MD Anderson in Houston back in 2008 for a cancer treatment. They got stuck in hurricane Ike evacuation. Took them hours just to get to Conroe.
Sometimes bad stuff happens and there is little that puny humans can do about it. Evacuating would probably been as bad as not.
But now everyone gets to second guess.
Where would you evacuate millions of people to and how would you do it?
Moving that many people before a hurricane would cause more problems that it solved. Too many people cause too many problems. Simple as that.
Sounds easy in theory but almost impossible in reality.
When you live below sea level (New Orleans) or barely above sea level close to the coast (Houston), this is what should be expected on a regular basis when severe weather hits.
It's another example of Mother Nature doing what she wants, not what humans try to get her to do.
The Houston Mayor wants plenty of victims for the media to use against Trump ala’ Katrina and New Orleans.
Houston metro is nearly six million people. It wasn’t really until Wednesday when there was much certainty. Forty-eight to 72 hours is impossible for a metro area.
Here’s a story from Wednesday:
...Hurricane Harvey is heading toward the Gulf Coast and could become a major Category 3 hurricane by Friday.
The storm’s track, while still unpredictable, appears to be heading south of Houston but could dump 12 to 20 inches of rain or more across a broad area of the Texas coastline...
Houston 25% White alone, not Black, not Hispanic.........
Looks like the majority of the minorities are going to suffer disproportionally, as they always do...... means all those Privileged Whites will be on the higher ground or out of town..
That’s EXACTLY WHAT they planned for Rita. Get the 3/4 true coastal counties out. THRU Houston because there is no other path for most of them.
THEN tell Houston to go. And about an hour after that started for Rita — much of Houston jumped out their doors, onto the closest freeway, and the entire region gridlocked.
My parents left Wharton in a big camper. Taking 59 South to El Campo / Hwy 71 to old 90A, and that further west Towards San Antonio. They were never within 50 miles of the city limits of Houston.
It took them 11 hours to get past Columbus before the traffic broke loose a little. And they never went through a town bigger than about 5000 people.
If U had 100,000 National Guard troops enforcing your way at the point of a gun it might work. But not on a voluntary basis.
It’s a puzzlement.
“Evacuation would have been much worse, imo. I’d have stayed anyway.”
After all theses floods in the past few decades you would think Houston would have figured out which areas are most likely to flood and how to order people to leave those specific areas in sections as to insure the roads are not jammed.
You can even close off entry roads to said areas to force people of each section on the most efferent route out of the city.
Its not that hard to do, a phone registry is one way to even coordinate said evacuations by calling people up in sections, but even public announcements naming specific streets with even and odd addresses works, to say nothing of the old fashion way of announcing from police car loud speaker.
A major city can be evacuated, but it doesn’t need to be, only very specific areas of the city need to be evacuated to reduce the number of people in need of rescusing.
Water is quite predictable, it always pools in the lowest areas, and if you can’t figure that out you got past flooding areas to tell you.
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