Two words for those who're flinging shade at Houston municipal officials: Hurricane Rita

[Lee-Lee]

46. The proper way is phased mandatory evacuations

Doing it by neighborhood over several days, right down to the 6 hour block of time a person must leave.

You map out your vulnerable areas to flood. That data exists now in detail, so not a big effort is needed to get that info.

You assign every home, apartment, business a group number, starting with the most vulnerable. It includes an official sign that will go in your windshield for the evacuations.

You start holding mandatory evacuations based on numbers- when you start all #1's must be evacuated or businesses closed no later than 12:00. Then all #2's no later than 6:00. The #3's no later than 12:00. And so on.

If you stay past that mandatory time, then you are on your own. No rescue. If you stay past that time you will not be allowed on the highway later during other evacuation periods until the cycle has worked through to whatever the highest number is.

With that kind of planning and proper management you could do evacuations. However nobody wants to listen when told to evacuate until the very last minute so people would hate that and wouldn't support it, and no city wants to have to manage that kind of effort.