Michael J. Totten: Another Monster

September 23, 2005

Another Monster

Looks like a lot of people, for a while anyway, figured Rita was just another hurricane. What are the odds that a monster category 4/5 storm in the Gulf is immediately followed up with yet another monster category 4/5 storm in the Gulf? This is unprecedented. Rita fooled me, and I apologize for being flip about it earlier.

UPDATE: Laurence Simon is staying in Houston to blog Rita.

Posted by Michael J. Totten at September 23, 2005 11:10 AM

Comments

Chaos within Order within Chaos within Order...

and some people think they can figure out reality ;-)

Posted by: Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord at September 23, 2005 12:07 PM

I believe it's down to a cat 3 now.

And while it seems to have changed course so that it won't directly hit Galveston and Houston (good news), its new path heads straight through hundreds of offshore oil platforms and dozens of drilling rigs and refineries.

Don't know about the gas prices in the US, but they're climbing quite high here in Canada.

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at September 23, 2005 01:30 PM

Down from cat 5 to cat 3 is like getting hit by a semi truck instead of a freight train. It's gonna hurt. But much better Beaumont than Houston though. One major metro area taken offline is more than enough. That would really do a job on our economy.

Here in the hill country the wind has picked up, but it's still sunny and quite pleasant. Luckily we'll only get the outer bands and lots of rain, which we desperately need.

Posted by: Carlos at September 23, 2005 02:19 PM

Michael

Good luck with all your travels and work in the Middle East. I'm a Westerner in the East too, but a bit further East - the Far East!

Can't say I've always agreed with your views as expressed on your blog, but respect to you for getting out there, to find things out at first hand.

Posted by: Benjamin at September 23, 2005 04:11 PM

In some ways, the "odds" are the same whether it happens or not; perhaps some 1 in a hundred. But anytime people actually experience a 1 in a hundred chance event happening, they adjust their expected odds to make the likelihood MORE likely.

I keep waiting for the greens/ global warming/ "climate change" (this will be the new buzzword, much less controversial) folk to call for higher gas taxes. Until US folk support THAT action (or a similar carbon tax), they're not serious about behavior change.

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 24, 2005 04:02 AM

Texas dodges a bullet.

Posted by: Carlos at September 24, 2005 06:53 AM

My experience with hurricane Rita:

I evacuated Houston starting Thursday night at 2:00 am when the computer models showed a cat 5 heading directly for Houston. Too scary to stay for me. It took 10 hours to travel 50 miles north on Hardy toll road then I-45 from midtown Houston. Once my family was in Conroe the couterflow up I-45 began and we crawled for 10 mph for a few hours. Then we were going 60 mph all the way to Buffalo (about 80 miles) then up to my sister's place in Tyler (another 60 miles northeast). Total trip in 20 hours on one tank of gas. Filled up in Palestine (pronounced pal-es-teen) where there was plenty of gas. (My 16 month old boy did amazingly well in the car even though he only slept for a total of one hour.)

The drivers were mostly courteous and friendly and I didn't see anyone who was really angry at the government (or anything else). The evacuation was slow but smooth. Gas was available along the way however the lines were 100's of cars long. I didn't hear a single horn honking in anger. People were helping to push cars and share gas cans. The only annoyance I saw was that some drivers were passing on the shoulders which actually caused more traffic jams when they were forced to merge back by the police.

Mayor of Houston Bill White, Gov. Perry, and Judge Eckles did a very good job planning and cooperating with each other. Moving 3 million people, including 10's of thousands of Katrina evacuees, with as little trouble as there was shows that they had their act together. Unlike Louisiana, local and state government responded like they were supposed too. There was no finger pointing at the Feds for anything. We took care of ourselves.

The attempt by the media to twist Bill White's statements about managing the gasoline supplies is irritating. In his press conference White stated that a lesson learned by the planners is that they needed to manage gasoline supplies better (and it was clear he included himself in the criticism). He didn't "blast" anyone. He and the other government officials were professional and cooperative during the entire hurricane emergency. I give them all a A- and I'm proud of them all for stepping up, cooperating, acting like leaders, and not trying to blame anyone for the few issues that arose.

On Friday night in Houston there were 28 burgleries/looting incidents reported with 16 arrests - less than what is normally reported on a typical Friday night. Great news.

Now I'm waiting out the storm in Tyler (about 80 miles east of the eye of Rita with about 40 mph gusts. Nothing too bad here and we didn't lose electric power.

Houston is very lucky. A direct hit would have flooded a third of the city and wiped out many refineries and chemical plants. New Orleans is not so lucky with the levees breaking again. What a mess there.

David Thompson - did you evacuate?

Posted by: markytom at September 24, 2005 03:33 PM

I was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama over the weekend, and the county had four tornados with one hitting a trailer park holding some of the New Orleans evacuees. (Talk about bad luck.) These tornados were spawned, in part, by Rita, so the hurricane can have extended and delayed destruction in this manner. In Oregon, there aren't a lot of hurricanes, but on the Gulf you take them very seriously.

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