Been listening to ABC News and they're taking the Texas response to task for having people evacuating along the highways, which are stuck in gridlock. There was some contraflow lanes set up, but the situation is quite serious. People have run out of gas going only a few miles. Others have turned around to head back home because the roads are gridlocked. Once again, there's some question as to how the contraflow system worked, and whether there were better ways to get out of town.
Most people have left Galveston, and the Mayor is sticking out the storm. However, she's asked for 1,500 National Guardsman and search and rescue teams to come in after the storm passes. The seawall is 17 feet tall, but the expected surge is supposed to be at least 20 feet. The city would be flooded, but the storm waters would quickly recede with the normal tidal flow.
Airports didn't have enough screeners because the screeners themselves needed to evacuate. Delays were 2 hours to get through screening, and ABC was saying that there were no measures to skip screening. That's right, ABC was wondering why they didn't simply stop screening passengers. Hey, does 9/11 ring a bell. A terrorist could use this situation to their advantage or did that not ever occur to them.
Oh jeez, ABC is getting into the reasons for more strong storms. But they're only looking back 25-30 years! In other words, global warming is to blame, despite the fact that there are cycles in storm strength and prevalence. Max Mayfield of the NHC notes that there are cycles in storms, and all one has to do is look back 100 years (as I've pointed out elsewhere and you can find on the NHC site) and see that 100 years ago, the country was in the midst of a really bad decade of storms.
Michelle Malkin has much more, including some not so flattering looks at the Houston reaction to incoming traffic from the coastline.
Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; hurricane rita; katrina aid; new orleans, rita, galveston, corpus christi.
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