On evacuations

I've gotten some questions on why we didn't evacuate prior to Ike, and I have some sort of random thoughts that I wanted to work out. Blogging is always a good way to do that.

The Houston metropolitan area is huge. As we saw in Rita, there is no way to get all the residents out in advance of a storm. So the city has set up different zones, based on the risk of flooding. The plan for Ike was to get those people who had decent chances of being flooded out. The power of the storm surge is tremendous, and as you can see from the remains of Crystal Beach, you don't want people in area where they can be inundated by storm surge.

As bad as it is, we were actually quite lucky in that Ike took a wobble and passed over Galveston instead of further to the west. A direct hit over Freeport could have been catastrophic for Galveston Bay (and Clear Lake, Pasadena, and all of SE Harris County and Galevston County). Hundreds of thousands of homes could have been flooded and the potential for injury and loss of life was large.

Folks in my area were asked to stay in place so that those who were in danger could get out. In a lot of ways, this plan worked quite well, both for us and for our community. The people in mandatory evacuation zones did get out to safety. And Ike passed over, a powerful storm but not catastrophic. We were able to evaluate the situation at our home post-Ike, prepare our house for an extended absence, do some fence repair work, and then leave. We had supplies at home for more than a week and two cars in good repair with full tanks of gas.

But, of course, being this prepared takes money and time. I had an extra $400 to buy water, nonperishable food items, bug spray, batteries, plywood, etc. We had the time to gas up the cars and board up our home. While the kids were at school, I could go wait in line to buy bread and peanut butter and jelly. We have a camp stove and propane and everything you'd need to rough it. And, we have the financial ability to go stay in a hotel out of town (or with my sister).

I think asking people to stay was right. But, if you are going to do that, you have to be prepared to help them afterwards. Not everyone can afford to buy what we bought; way too many people scrape by from paycheck to paycheck. Not everyone is a salaried employee who gets paid when they miss work. Many people faced the storm unprepared, but they stayed put because their city and county and state asked them to. This was vitally important in that it could have and probably did save lives.

But, what will happen next time? This has been extremely difficult and hard on so many people. I worry that next time, people won't listen to the city and the county and won't stay.