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Shelters left powerless, abandoned
Published September 25, 2005
CONROE — A stoplight, damaged by the wind and rain, loomed a couple feet above the road as if it were asking the southbound traffic, “Why? Why? Why?”
By noon Saturday, less than 12 hours after the eye of Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast, Interstate 45 South had a constant flow of traffic. Pleadings by Gov. Rick Perry and Houston Mayor Bill White to stay put seemed to make little sense to the drivers.
“People aren’t paying attention. The governor and the mayor said don’t go back 10 minutes ago and look at the cars,” Conroe Police Officer Joe Oldner said.
Power is out, phone lines are down and winds are still blowing leaves and branches down on top of cars, but the the motorists continue south.
The trees resemble yogis performing an intensive workout. Parts of aluminum signs lining the tops of businesses in a small plaza are crashing to the ground with every strong wind gust.
A local Randall’s supermarket posted signs in its front windows stating, “Sorry, we’re closed but good luck and take care.”
Every business appears to be closed.
“Plus there’s no gas in Conroe,” another Conroe officer said.
Little did he know.
At about 12:30 p.m., an Exxon tanker would pull into the Exxon station just off I-45. Behind the tanker was a train of cars that within minutes backed up traffic for several blocks along Highway 105.
Pumping gas into their Ford truck, a group of Pearland residents who were staying at a church in Conroe after their tank lacked enough fuel to make it to Dallas, were happy to be headed home.
“We called our uncle in Pasadena and he said the power was on in Pearland so we’re going to try and make it back,” said 19-year-old Jose Rodriguez, who was traveling with his father and uncle.
An Exxon manager from the Woodlands came to Conroe to help the overflowing station. While he expected lots of cars, he didn’t expect they would have to rely on the police just to do business.
“They just followed that tanker up,” said the manager, John, who would not give his last name. “We kept the price the same, at $2.63, but we are limiting them to 10 gallons because we only got about 10,000 gallons in the ground.”
Police regulated the number of people in the food mart as well. When one man tried to walk up to a pump to fill up a container with gas, an officer yelled at him, “Sir, I’ve told you once, you need to get back in your car.”
The police were forced to block the exit from I-45 to Highway 105 because the traffic around the station was multiplying.
Pulled to the side of the road, David Cudd tried to reattach a U-Haul to his Yukon truck. Two police officers stopped to help him. With a full tank of gas in his GMC sports utility vehicle, Cudd of West Fork, west of Conroe, is taking his mother back to her house in Humble.
“I had a house full of evacuees during the storm, but now I don’t have power and they do, so all my evacuees are going home,” Cudd said.
Shelter parking lots were emptying as people decided that trying their luck on the road would be better than staying at a powerless shelter.
“There’s nothing we can do to stop them,” Oldner said.
Thirty-one Red Cross shelters in Houston, Montgomery and Wilson counties housed 7,217 people during the storm, said Bob Cargo, director of the Red Cross Greater Houston Area’s northern branch. All of the shelters were full and some housed more than their designated capacity, he said.
The doors to two shelters in Conroe were locked Saturday afternoon and no one could be seen walking inside the buildings that had no electricity.
Outside the United Methodist Church in Conroe, branches, leaves, a Kroger bag and a Bud Light cardboard box cover the church’s driveway.
A sign on the door reads, “Will not be a shelter.” But Cargo says the church was full during the storm.
The humidity seemed to rise with the anticipation of inspecting homes. The traffic continued to get heavier and heavier on I-45.
“The rain has stopped but the city is not cleaned up,” said a Texas Department of Transportation employee who said he was not allowed to give his name. “If they want to come back, that’s their own decision, but they might get stuck in traffic for hours.”
Lucretia fernandez is a reporter for The Facts. Contact her at (979) 237-0150.
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