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Next time, some won't be as quick to go
Published September 26, 2005
Evacuating didn’t leave a sour taste in Kathy Daughrity’s mouth.
While others waited until late Wednesday or Thursday to evacuate, the Lake Jackson woman fled town early Wednesday morning. She breezed down highways on her way to Nacogdoches after leaving town at 7:30 a.m.
If another vicious hurricane threatened the Texas coast, Daughrity would evacuate again, although she realized she might be in the minority.
“Some people may not because of the trouble they had,” Daughrity said.
An intact home and unscathed buildings greeted Daughrity when she returned Saturday afternoon. She felt “thankful that it was sunshine and no damage. Lake Jackson was spared.”
Ruth Lange didn’t encounter road hazards either while evacuating from Lake Jackson to Taylor, north of Austin.
“We were one of the lucky ones,” Lange said. “We weren’t on the roads for hours and hours.”
Without hesitation, Lange said she would evacuate again, even under conditions of gargantuan traffic jams. “I would. No doubt about it,” she said.
Her son, Rodney Lange, was less sanguine about his next evacuation. “Not me,” he said.
The Lake Jackson man shook his head, saying under the threat of a natural disaster, he would prefer the comforts of home than the 151?2-hour trip it took to reach San Antonio.
In the coming weeks, city and county officials will study flaws in the plan so the traffic fiasco doesn’t deter residents from evacuating. People must continue to heed mandatory evacuation warnings, said Angleton Mayor Matt Sebesta.
“I don’t want to have people to have developed a false sense of security from this storm,” he said.
Many Brazoria County residents left the coastal area by Thursday evening, but the plan fell apart when they hit Houston traffic because the evacuation’s control mechanisms didn’t materialize, Sebesta said.
The traffic snarls were compounded when area gas stations began closing, reducing the local supply for others heading out of town. Then, Houston residents began evacuating and snatched all the gas there, he said.
Local businesses, including gas stations, need to be involved in discussions to ensure fuel, food and water for those evacuating, said Lake Jackson Mayor Shane Pirtle. Businesses started shutting down Tuesday, almost 24 hours before the mandatory evacuation went into effect.
Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of Mississippi and Louisiana alarmed people, causing them to evacuate en masse, said Freeport Fire Chief John Stanford. They rushed to get out of harm’s way as Hurricane Rita continued to shift direction.
“You had so much movement of the storm, it created a domino effect,” Stanford said.
Stanford pointed to other glitches, including people using Highway 35 as an evacuation route. In addition, Brazoria County evacuation routes didn’t get all the Department of Public Safety troopers promised to man roadblocks, he said.
Brazoria County Judge John Willy plans to meet with officials from Wharton, Jackson and Matagorda counties so rural communities can bypass Houston traffic, which encompasses about 4.7 million people, said Kent Burkett, Willy’s administrative assistant.
Pirtle stressed local hospitals also need to join discussions to develop a better plan to evacuate medical staff closer to the time a storm hits, whether by last-minute airlifts or an emergency escort, he said.
Nevertheless, the untried evacuation worked since up to 2.8 million people evacuated in 48 hours, a first-time feat in the state and nation, said Clute Assistant City Manager Dennis Smith.
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