What a difference a day makes!
Sep 23rd, 2005 by Sandra
We got up early this morning and discovered Houston’s roads were empty so we bailed as soon as we’d helped our friends bring in their plants and patio furniture. We headed northwest to Austin to another friend’s house, and encountered very little traffic other than in the bustling burg of Giddings, where the traffic slowed to a crawl and every gas station was mobbed.
Eeriest sight: Dozens of abandoned cars dotted here and there on the roadside.
Most surprising sight: Literally hundreds of cars lined up at a gas station near Brenham, TX, all waiting for a gas tanker to refuel the station.
Most comforting sight: TX Department of Transportation employees giving 5 and 10 gallons of gas to stranded motorists.
Most frustrating sight: TX Department of Transportation employees giving 5 and 10 gallons of gas to stranded motorists.
Best feeling: Reaching Austin and filling up both vehicles; sitting in Susie’s peaceful garden.
Surprising pet trick: Cole (aka Joe Muggins) appears to have acclimated just fine to the traveling life, spending much of his riding time curled up on my clothing-filled garbage bags.
TX DOT earns my most comforting/most frustrating listings because it apparently never occurred to TPTB that if you order a mandatory evacuation along known evacuation routes, you’re probably going to need to make sure those arteries have adequate fuel stops.
So while Galveston County gets high marks for sending us out of the area early in the week, the state and TX DOT earn low marks for poor follow-through — not reversing the inbound lanes soon enough to avoid horrific traffic jams all over the major freeways and not getting on the horn to the gas companies to start shoving tankers down our direction.
It’s all a learning experience, and I hope we do actually learn something from this. I’d hoped we’d learn something from Hurricane Katrina and it looks like we have.
On the good news side, it looks like Galveston Bay is going to experience reverse storm surge, with water getting sucked out of the bay to feed the hurricane. That seems to mean Dorothea will sit on the marina’s bottom during much of the hurricane, which may be better than having her thrown around like mad well above the dock. I don’t know how much damage will occur to her, but perhaps it’ll be less.
I just wish New Orleans wasn’t getting hammered again. New Orleans has been through enough, don’t you think?