How many people stayed on in Galveston and other evacuation

[hedgehog]

zones because of the lousy evacuation centers set up for Gustav?

[RB TexLa]

1. Why would people from Galveston have gone to see a Gustav evacuation center?

[hedgehog]

3. I heard one radio report of people who evacuated ahead of Gustav

who ended up sheltered in an old Sam's Club Warehouse. I don't know how many people were there, but the cots were set up inches apart and there were 4 toilets, 4 sinks and no showers. I can imagine someone hearing about that and deciding that staying home was the better option.

[RB TexLa]

5. Hearing about them. OK

[RoyGBiv]

6. Some went to OKC ...

People (apparent immigrants) were told just to get on the buses and go. In the interest of saving lives, they weren't checking residency papers. Just get on the bus and go.

They got to OKC and wound up in jail ... because they didn't have their papers.

[Bob Dobbs]

2. The total screw up that was the Katrina and Rita evacuations

influenced many that they were better off staying put.

Fatal mistake, but not unfathomable, their reasoning.

[RoyGBiv]

4. Memories of Rita ...

It wasn't so much Gustav as memories of Rita.

If you go to the Houston Chronicle, KHOU, or one of the other Houston news outlets and start reading what people were saying about why they stayed, you'll find a pattern. Other than the standard "didn't think it would be this bad," "I've lived here, I'll die here," etc. comments, a significant percentage invoke the Rita evacuation. As an example, one resident of Galveston talked about being on the road for 36 hours and making it to the Woodlands, which is not all that far. He noted how the evacuation put his wife in the hospital, and then after all that, Rita turned ... as a lot of these storms do.

My uncle left his home in Webster, spent about 30 hours on the road, and all he managed to do was wind up on the area of the coast where Rita actually did hit.

Evacuation, especially from a hurricane, is not nearly as simple as these "just pack up and leave" people think it is. You often put yourself in a worse situation than the one you left.

Over 100 people died during the Rita evacuation, which is more than from the storm itself. Everyone here talks about that, and it has made people afraid to leave.

[hedgehog]

8. I can understand what you're saying. By the time anyone can say for sure

what's coming and where it's going to land, it's too late to get out of the way. The only way to be safe is to endure a lot of false alarms, and that can get old really fast. My point is that if you want people to leave, you better have decent places for them to go to. IMO, FEMA is only doing half the job.

[RoyGBiv]

12. Oh, I understand your point ...

It's a very good point.

Hell, I live here, keep myself well-informed, and even I didn't know where I might go if I had decided to do so. The options available to me for shelters looked worse or not any better than sitting it out in my apartment. Yes, I went through a night of sheer terror, but I had my cat and my bed, and the next day I wasn't trying to figure out where I'd get money or fuel. I have friends around town who don't have power or water service and are living quite the spartan existence at the moment and can't even get over to my house where it's cool for various reasons. They're still not sorry they stayed because the shelters they could have gone to are not in any better shape than where they are now.

Since I wasn't in a mandatory evacuation zone, all my local government offered was the "hunker down" advice, which, all tolled, was probably the best advice for me personally.

The best advice for those closer to the coast was in fact to get out, but with all the uncertainties involved from all angles, I have no problem understanding why they chose to stay, if in fact they "chose" to stay. Some really couldn't get out.

[Longhorn]

14. Here in Austin, there were reports that people were sleeping on bare floors.

The shelters didn't have bedding and someone was quoted in the paper as saying that evacuees were told to bring their own bedding. :shrug: They were also telling Austinites not to bring them bedding. I guess they got it worked out.

[Longhorn]

11. I agree. And if Rita had actually hit Houston, many, many people would have died

because they were stranded on those highways?

They're now saying perhaps 140,000 people did not evacuate who had been told to. What would the evacuation process been like with those additional 140,000 people on the roads?

I really have a hard time blaming people after Rita. So far, the death toll has been very low, with only three out of the eight reported deaths due to drowning and I don't know if those folks were in a mandatory evacuation area. I hope that's all. I've never been told to evacuate -- I honestly can't say what I would do so I hesitate to judge.

[RoyGBiv]

13. Another what-if ...

Had people been stranded on highways during *this* storm, the death toll would be massive, worse than Rita would have been. The eye wall went right up 45 as far as The Woodlands. Cars would not have held up to that.

By the time Houston proper was being told that Ike was most likely going to go straight through here, we're inside the time needed for such a massive evacuation. A lot of people would be stuck, and a lot more who made it some place where they could have stopped would have been in no better a position. People taking I-45, US 59, and I-10E would have been in a bad, bad spot. Only those that headed toward Austin and San Antonio would have been spared, and the road networks leading there simply cannot handle 4 million people all trying to leave in 36 hours time.

[SheilaT]

7. People stay behind for lots of reasons.

Starting with they just don't think it will be that bad and they do not want to leave their homes.

Some people can't afford the current high price of gas to drive several hundred miles and pay to stay in a hotel for a long time. And they either don't know about the shelters or don't want to go to one.

They heard horror stories about shelters -- remember all the claims of rapes and murders that never happened in the Astrodome -- and they don't want to risk that.

I personally suspect that many of those who stay behind really have no clue how bad it might get. I myself have never been in an actual hurricane, although I've experienced my share of violent thunderstorms in the midwest, and I can tell you about 100 mile per hour wind gusts in Boulder, Colorado. The only earthquake I've been in I slept through -- it wasn't that strong, obviously.

I like to think that if I were ever to live close enough to the coast to experience hurricanes that I'd leave, but I'm an educated, well-informed (I hope) person young enough to get around easily, and with the financial resources to pay for gas and hotel rooms.

[hedgehog]

9. People generally have no idea of the power of water. Look how many stories

there are every year of cars swept away when the drivers try to go through a foot of fast moving flood water.

[SheilaT]

15. So true.

But I have a hard time having sympathy for people who can evacuate and decide they want to ride it out, and before the storm completely dismiss reports of how dangerous it might be.

Stupidity should not be rewarded.

[hedgehog]

10. Here's someone with actual information on the subject:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4001788