I’m stressed. Watching the CNN coverage of the preparations for Hurricane Rita for the past couple of hours has raised my anxiety level again. I can’t even begin to imagine how the people on the ground are feeling – those waiting in the extremely long lineups to get out of Houston.
What’s going on here?
Houston is a city of some 4 million people. Once again, we are witnessing the failure of the Dept of Homeland Security and other branches of government on a massive scale. As I write this, whoever is in charge of the highways in Houston has not opened all or most of the incoming or outgoing lanes – freeing up much needed routes to evacuate. People are running out of gas. Gas stations are running out of gas. People are running low on patience. People have decided to not even attempt to vacate the city, despite the mandatory evacuation.
Meanwhile, at the airport, reportedly many TSA employees have not shown up for work. Two questions: does the US have legislation that makes it mandatory for essential workers to show up during times of crisis? And, how about getting some of those huge military transport planes in there to airlift people out? Oh – and do they have emergency supplies at the airport in case those people are stuck there for the duration? Will that turn out to be the new convention center-like hellhole?
What if this was a nuclear attack? Do you trust this damn administration to protect you anymore? Should anyone? Will heads roll over these failures or will more medals of freedom be handed out?
Seriously – lessons learned? Obviously not. This is insane.
Okay. Apparently, the Houston authorities are beginning to open up those extra highway lanes. About damn time!
Meanwhile, your fearless leader held a press conference this morning about the war on terra. Hello?? Anybody home?? The terra is in your country right now and you are failing once again. Wake up and watch TV or read a newspaper for once in your life. NOBODY cares much about your global war on terra today. They want to know what you’re going to do to save millions of people in Texas and Louisiana.
Like you always do, you’ll show your face in Texas tomorrow for your photo op because that’s what you do best – pretend to be presidentin’. What a useless leader you are. Face it and repent for once. What are you afraid of? That you’ll burn and end up being just a pile of dust? Well, guess what? A pile of dust would be more effective than you’re being right now so that wouldn’t be a huge loss to the country.
must_breathe_in
And how much very expensive jet fuel is he burning up with these jerk-off trips of his?
I’m very concerned about those who evacuated from points east during hurricane Katrina, ended up in Houston and who now face evacuation again – especially the children. Too much trauma for every last one of them…
Back when I was doing disaster ‘stuff’ I was amazed at how well children handled psychological stress. A fuzzy toy, a bit of judicious help, a bunch of other kids to bounce off of, and they came back pretty fast.
There was a terrible segment on NPR news today. A woman from NOLA who is in Houston at the Astrodome was told, by some idiot, that she didn’t sign up in time to leave, so she’d have to stay in Houston.
The woman lost it. She ran outside and fell to the ground, howling. Finally, a Red Cross mental health worker came to help her, as a crowd gathered around her.
And, eventually, she was told she could leave Houston.
Thank goodness she was allowed to leave. The panic must be incredible!
God .. the mayor says he asked for the extra lanes to be reversed 15 hours ago … and there was also supposed to be extra gas up the highway but isn’t? (something lik that)
Oh my god — they’re showing the lines at gas stations.
Catnip, you nailed it. It is insane.
Catnip, yes … and i heard Houston has 4.5 million people, and it’s the FOURTH LARGEST city in the United States.
I wonder if a lot of those people would have been safer at home than stranded on a highway!
I live in a city of 20,000 people, with nearby towns, it comes to about 68,000 people affected. We have one two-lane highway out of town. If all 68,000 of us had to evacuate, it’d never happen. We’d be stuck.
And that’s if we had a warning. With an earthquake, forget it. The highway will probably be impassible.
One begins to wonder how many more of these things are going to happen before people start waking-up and realize if you live in a disaster prone area the disaster will, eventually, happen. People have been warned for decades building homes along the Gulf coast is dumb.
Well, Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, is a’comin and some number of the people stuck on those highways have a high chance of being dead by Sunday morning. We’re looking a billions of bucks of real property put at risk. We’re looking at the complete destruction, potential, of the Gulf fishing industry. We’re looking at billions of dollars of consumer purchasing shifting from non-transportation goods and services – giving an unpredictable shift of wealth with an unpredictable economic affect and effect.
And that ain’t nothing compared to the affects of a major earthquake in the LA basin.
And leave us not forget the still serious danger of a world-wide Avian flu pandemic.
Sometimes I think I should change my blog-handle to ‘Eeyore.’
If you want to relieve your stress, I would recommend sticking to the weather channel. The MSM, and, yes, the blogs, have really sensationalized this hurricane. A diary at DailyKos is positively out of control. (Why I ever go over there anymore . . .)
I’m certainly not saying Rita will not be a hurricane capable of terrible damage, but the sensationalism is out of control.
Here are a couple of facts: Rita has gone from a Cat 5 to a Cat 4 — still very destructive (after all, Katrina landed as a Cat 4 hurricane). But, as it moves west, it is not being fed by the warmest waters of the gulf any longer. Pressure inside the hurricane, which at one point was the third lowest on record (the lower the pressure inside the hurricane the more powerful it is), is now dropping. The last report put it at 913 mb — still within the Cat 5 range, but significantly higher than the previous readings.
I’ve have heard that some are predicting that Rita will land as a Cat 3 hurricane. Unfortunately, a Cat 3 hurricane is still very dangerous so no one should interpret anything I’ve written here as a signal to let down your guard. But the brief second of solid journalism we saw after Katrina is now history. It’s back to television as usual.
True, but it is still going to carry a huge storm surge. This is from Jeff Masters’ blog over at Weather Underground:
I won’t make the argument that this isn’t being sensationalized, because it certainly is. But at the same time, it’s important to remember that the category of the storm as it makes landfall isn’t necessarily indicative of the damage it will cause.
I know you weren’t trying to downplay the danger in any way. I just hope that people realize how dangerous it is, so that they know they have to get out, but not so much as to be panicked.
And this is before the storm – just lookng at the ineptitude of gov’t offcials and their so-called planning again.
I heard on the news today that they brought in tanker trucks of gasoline, and lined them up on the highways at intervals. This is how they will fill up the cars that run out of gas along the evacuation route.
Global News interviewed a Toronto woman who is now living in the Houston area. She said she decided not to leave when she realized she’d be in her car for 25 hours driving 1 mile every minute. She’s going to take her chances.
People are still flying to Houston? Why haven’t they cancelled flights in?
Actually. cancelling flights IN is a bad idea. Without the planes coming in there can be no planes going out, right? This situation happened in New Orleans where the airlines started cancelling flight to NO, that left the airport empty of planes forcing the cancelling outgoing flights. People who thought they had tickets to leave were forced to stay and find some other way to get out of town. Many were forced to go back to the French Quarter to their hotels.
The key is to have the airlines maintain all their flights in even if they are empty. As far as I know, nothing prevents an airline from cancelling a less than filled flight to Houston. This, of course, forces the cancellation of the return trips out.
That makes sense, but the people flying into Houston will be stuck there and won’t be able to evacuate.
Isn’t Bush supposed to be coming here today? Anyone know where and when? He’ll probably pick the most incovenient place to go, so that they can stop all operations for hours on end….
He had better stay FAAR the fuck away from me, that’s all I have to say.