RITA -

PART ONE

Greetings from the Gulf coast of Texas! As everyone is aware, Hurricane Rita is one big storm and landfall is projected tonight thru- tomorrow predawn. As you've probably seen, there have been major traffic tie-ups and little to no gasoline along these routes. This will be an ongoing multi-part blog entry, but here's what has happened since Wednesday -

Around midday on Wednesday our company decided to close down on Thursday and Friday to allow for folks to take care of their families. I started backup procedures around noon, but many were not complete so I knew I'd have to come in the following day. Traffic going home was heavy, approx. equivilent to a 3-day weekend, and lot's of people going out of town. I'm talking about the I-10 West route, from leaving the Houston Area to where I live (approx. 50 miles West of Houston).

THURSDAY

Thursday morning I left around 9 a.m for work (Sugar Land) and found bumper to bumper traffic going West Bound, with many cars off to one side of the road for lack of gasoline. This didn't look good, so I thought I'd take my backup route (359 at Brookshire) to 1093 and then follow it to hwy 99 and from there into work.

Once off the freeway and onto 359 I saw an immediate backup in the Northbound lane heading for I-10. When I got to 1093, it was probably the worst I've ever experienced traffic along the route (not for me mind you, as I was driving towards town and not away from it). Cars were stopped, people were standing outside there cars either trying to get a connection on their cell phones, or just staring ahead at what seemed like an endless line of cars. Gas stations were full of cars, but these stations didn't have any gas to offer - these people couldn't go any further so they either drove or pushed their cars to the pumps should some gas evdentually arrive.

This backup on 1093 was almost bumper-to-bumper from Fulshear to the junction of Hwy 99 and 1093 (about 10 miles). I didn't have any problems getting to work, and avoided a route that took my by many gas stations because of the traffic tie-ups surrounding them. Points of armchair quarterbacking: Police should have been at the 359/1093 junction to direct traffic in a more timely fashion than the fixed timing signal lights allowed, as they were in Brookshire! (Smart going and kudo's to you on the force in Brookshire).

I took my time collecting data because until traffic was flowing, I had no inclination to get out in it - I'd already seen the stories of people who spent 3-4 hours just to move six miles, and of another family that spent 10 hours on the freeway just to get from South Houston to North Houston.

Evening came as traffice reports and traffic cams indicated I-10 was still a mess by 8pm, but I thought I take a chance on my 1093 route and hope it was better than earlier in the day. Servers were shutdown, and I grabbed my sack of data and left for home.

1093 was virtually empty and I got home in about 50 minutes which was excellent for my 52 mile drive. When I arrived in Sealy I found "Gas Station Ghost Towns" where the Stations had closed, long ago running out of gasoline to sell, yet were filling by dark shadows of cars and people, and the occasional light from a cell phone.

FRIDAY MORNING

I woke up about 7 and found the street in front of me filled with a line of cars that didn't seem to end - people waiting for gas to arrive. I'm guessing most of them were from out of town. My wife Michele said the line began very early about 3 or 4 a.m. and it's almost 11 a.m. now , and while the cars and faces have changed, the endless line of cars have not. Some people seem "Fresh" while others show the strains of 24+ hours of travel (if you can call it travel) on their faces.

During the daylight hours 14.325 (frequency) is a good one for recent hurricane info. I'm spending the morning making sure the extra batteries are charged for the notebook pc's, cell phones, ham radio's etc. And plan to drop off some old CB walkie-talkies (the good ones: heavy like a brick with 4-5 foot antennas) with my older Son and his girlfriend, and over at my mother-in-laws house so that when cell phone become hard to use (very easy) and should land phones quit, we'll still have some time of communications between the three locations. There is no telling what we'll get in the way of winds or tornado's, but it's better to be ready than not. Enough typing for now - Look for some photo's on a later post -

73

Woody