[Dialogue] Hurricane Rita

[Tim Wegner]

We left at 1:00 PM and by 4:30 PM we had made it a little past outer 
loop 6 - basically all the outbound roads were a parking lot. Many 
people are in the position of running out of gas, which is not 
available anywhere. We had about 3/4 tank so were OK, but the bad 
traffic coupled with the fact that the hurricane was downgraded from 
category five to four and is no longer projected to make a direct hit 
on Houston, and the fact that we're not in a flood plain caused us to 
decide to turn around.  If we lived in Galveston or any of the other 
low lying communities, returning would not be an option. The Mayor is 
actually asking people not exposed to flood risk to get off the roads 
and let others evacuate.

So we're back home, where we'll stay throughout the hurricane.

This will stimulate another set of emergency lessons learned. 
Basically it is not possible to evacuate a city the size of Houston 
in private vehicles. Houston outbound highways are gridlock for up to 
100 miles or so in every direction away from the coast.

Tim