I got this idea from browsing through the following thread:
http://www.red-mosquito.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=24730

I'm honestly not sure how different news outlets are reporting things to different areas - but I did see some of the national coverage and felt it was sadly lacking in the gravity of what had happened.

Leaving Houston

Basically, my girlfriend and I left Houston early Thursday morning for a small town outside of Nacogdoches, which I think is roughly 150 miles from the part of Houston in which we live. The first impetus for us to leave was given to us by local television, which managed to imply that Rita was basically the storm to end all storms. Among other things, it was quite possible that Galveston Island would simply not exist after it made landfall - and that Houston itself would suffer major damage. The second impetus came from the sheer panic that seemed to surround the evacuation. While only the "storm surge" areas were being given mandatory evacuations, a lot of people were bailing out from Houston. (The estimates seem to fall between 2.5 and 2.8 million people.)

The evacuations were planned to use five major routes out of Houston. The four were I-10 (toward San Antonio), Highway 6 (honestly not sure where it goes when you drive north), I-45 (toward Dallas), 59 (toward East Texas, where we wanted to go), and 290 (toward Austin). We got to see this plan firsthand because we literally live about a block away from Highway 6 on the upper side of town.

Well, we fell asleep early Wednesday night before making a decision, but we awoke at approximately 2:30 in the morning and decided to go to Wal-Mart to stock up and head out of town. We thought 2:30 on Thursday morning would be good because of the panic we had seen developing in the afternoon the day before. In addition to the first waves of traffic during Wednesday afternoon, we realized that gasoline was going fast. I managed to fill up my tank at a nearby Texaco down Highway 6 after waiting in a gas line (which I had never actually seen happen in Houston). We agreed that she could just get gas Thursday morning - but, by that time, there was no gas to be found.

We awoke and drove to Wal-Mart. We were astonished by the never-ending traffic we saw streaming down Highway 6 to leave Houston at 3:00 in the morning. Also, all gas stations were closed and out of gas. There was an innumerable mass of people leaving Houston, and Houston had seemingly and absolutely run out of gas.

The Exodus

As it happens, we also live about 5-10 minutes from 290 - another evacuation route from Houston. So, we could tell from 290 and Highway 6 that the traffic was unimaginably bad. After realizing that Wal-Mart was basically stripped to the bone, we packed and made our way to 59 toward East Texas. However, we encountered some interesting things along the way.

The first was the traffic. I cannot stress enough just how bad the traffic was Thursday morning when we left. Unbelievable numbers of cars were just sitting and making major roadways out of Houston into large parking lots. Officials used the radio to repeatedly tell us not to use back roads around the freeways because "there was no police prescence on the back roads". Not really giving a damn where police were at, we decided to try and go around the standstill traffic snaking out of town. So, we used back roads. Along one of the back roads (near a city named New Caney, which you'll have to get a map to find), we found our first open gas station. It was a definite hole in the wall place, and the gas kept clicking off when I finally got my turn in line to fill up. The station was chaos - the attendant had no idea who was doing what. In retrospect, I could have driven away without consequence. But anyway, I filled my tank and we got the hell out of there. The back way we took made a turn West finally on FM 1485 and toward New Caney to rejoin 59. It took us two hours to go approximately 10 miles and rejoin 59.

On 59

59 was a madhouse. Traffic was inching forward, and reports had it doing so to Lufkin. (See a map to get an idea how of many miles of traffic that meant.) We actually realized early that the feeder road was moving at the same or faster clip, so we stayed on the feeder as long as we could. However, somewhere after Splendora the feeder ended and we were forced onto 59. We inched forward and tried to sneak jumps in traffic when we could. Basically, every inch of pavement (and then some) had been turned into part of the freeway by people. There were no police anywhere. We drove on the shoulder, on the upper part of the ditch on both sides, through the middle of cars inexplicably stopping. It was normal to see people jumping out of their car and chatting with everyone around (which annoyed us because we wanted everyone to sit in their cars and fucking drive). We also saw a lot of dogs being walked around the standstill traffic. Burning gas also became a major issue because it seemed like nobody in Houston or beyond had any gas to sell. I heard a few people started turning off their cars and putting them in neutral - and just pushing them a few carlengths when traffic would move. It was over 100 degrees outside.

Off of 59

After inching forward for awhile, we decided that we couldn't take it anymore. I was also scared of running out of gas and us being stranded on the side of the road. (Supposedly, TXDOT was driving around giving stranded motorists gas, but (1) I have no idea where they could have been driving through the traffic nitemare and (2) I never saw them.) The final straw was when we noticed the pavement on 59 coming off of the roadway. That's right - the tires had heated up the roadway so much that tar was obviously melting and being removed in places. I devised an impromptu route around Lake Livingston that would reunite us with 59 at Lufkin, where traffic was supposely alright. At Shepherd, I made my move.

Small Town Assholes

We encountered a number of small towns along the way. For some godforsaken reason, many of them had roads blocked and were forcing traffic in nonsensical ways through town. The worst of these was a town named Point Blank. At Point Blank, volunteer firefighters were rude (and sometimes screaming) toward people who asked questions about the traffic. We saw the volunteer firefighters laughing at people asking questions - people who had been stuck in cars upwards of at least ten hours. Also, all of us were treated to taunting by a man and woman riding around in a golf cart next to the cars and yelling at us in between sips of beer.

Apple Springs

Apple Springs was a godsend. We got gas. The people were nice. They even had ice for sale in the gas station.

However, the whole station smelled like urine from the evacuees not being able to hold it throughout the day.

Conclusion

Not much else of note happened. Rita was a big fat disappointment as far as what we were going to see. But anyways:

(1) The evacuations plans are total chaos. Scores of people were running out of gas. There was no gas anywhere in Houston. I don't know what planet the politicians were on, but the evacuation was total hell.

(2) They will make a big deal of opening up the freeways to have both sides in one direction, but this neglects a few major things. First of all, this only affected a few of the freeways - namely I-10, I-45, and 290. Where we were at, on 59, nobody did anything. Also, I-45 was only opened up after the Woodlands - which meant most people still had to go all the way across Houston and north a bit to get there. The trip across Houston was taking about 6-8 hours, from what I have heard.

(3) Law enforcement was becoming very beligerent with residents, much as was heard after Katrina. The messages from officials were just totally unrealistic. People were running out of gas from sitting in traffic so long, they were severely overheated, etc. A new message has them telling people to wait coming back until designated times. We were not supposed to return until tommorow under the plan, but we came back tonight with absolutely no problems. The traffic madness and gas shortages are bound to happen again in the return.

hey quad, ltns


i had no idea thats your hometown, glad to hear for the most part everything is fine, other than the fact that people can be assholes (of which, ive known forever)

there's another account here: http://www.theskyiscrape.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 312#635312

Glad you're ok ol' buddy.

wow interesting read...it's scary to think how situations like this one unfold..and that it will happen again...there are no plans for situations like this to make them go smoothly...