4 ms·

A few years ago they did call for an evacuation caused massive jams with thousands of cars stuck on highways. Many of these highways are underwater today an eva

A few years ago they did call for an evacuation caused massive jams with thousands of cars stuck on highways. Many of these highways are underwater today an evacuation would have made the situation worse.

org3432 9y ago
Why didn't they use trains or buses? That seems like a more obvious approach IMO.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  You're not from Texas, are you.
- mozumder 9y ago
  lol what trains & buses?
- brewdad 9y ago
  There are no trains. The nearest Amtrak station is in San Antonio. If you made it that far, you are probably already out of danger. As for buses, how do you coordinate bus plans for 6.5 million people across a 50 mile by 50 mile area? And then, assuming you could get even a million people onto buses, where do you take them that can handle even a hundred thousand refugees on 24-48 hours notice? For most of the US, and especially a city built like Houston, there are no good options. Edit: I underestimated the size of the Houston Metro Area. It's closer to 100 miles by 100 miles.
  - tzs 9y ago
    > There are no trains. The nearest Amtrak station is in San Antonio. There's a station in Beaumont, which is closer than San Antonio.
  - jen20 9y ago
    No trains? https://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2Station/Station_Page&code=HOS https://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2... That said, it's still not enough to even come close to evacuating a city like Houston.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    You don't need a station, you just need a track. You can load at any point where there's a track with a flat area beside it. The tricks are getting people to that loading point (without their cars, because you don't have enough parking for what you're trying to do), and getting the trains from that point to out of town without having to cross a flooded area. Houston has plenty of tracks. I presume it has flat areas next to tracks. Getting out of town without having to cross flooding? I don't know. Enough tracks to hold the traffic that would be needed? Probably not.
    - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
      Forgot tracks, what about actual trains. The passenger rail system in Texas is tiny.
- throwayit 9y ago
  1) Houston is one of the biggest metros areas in America at ~6 million. Even cities with strong public transportation wouldn't have the resources to bus and train 6 million people 2) There aren't many train lines, passenger trains, and most of the lines are inaccessible to most of the city. 3) There are not many buses in the city as the city is hugely sprawled out so public transportation is weak. However, even if Rita happened to a city like say Boston, with strong public transportation options, the disaster would be pretty similar. The traffic infrastructure just isn't there to transport 6 million+ people no matter what vehicle.
  - ej_campbell 9y ago
    Why is that an okay situation to be in? Given things floods, dirty bombs, etc. have a non-zero chance of happening, shouldn't cities, states and countries have the infrastructure to perform mass-evacuations if necessary?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Why is that an okay situation to be in? Because the cost to not be in it is enormous.
      - ej_campbell 9y ago
        Enormous compared to what? We spend 3.2 trillion a year on Medicare, which is 9.9K a person [1]. Imagine if just 1K per person per year (300B) was spent on infrastructure every year to make mass evacuations over a few days possible. Imagine how great normal day to day travel would be once that is in place, city by city. [1] https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Enormous compared to what? Enormous compared to the value provided. > We spend 3.2 trillion a year on Medicare No, we don't. As your own source says, it is only $646 billion on Medicare, and $3.2 trillion a year in total combined public and private healthcare expenditures. > Imagine if just 1K per person per year (300B) was spent on infrastructure every year to make mass evacuations over a few days possible. Then it still probably wouldn't be enough, and we'd get a lot more value for nearly doubling infrastructure spending [0] if we spent it on something else. [0] $416 billion/year in 2014, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52463 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52463
- iamnotlarry 9y ago
  6 million people / 60 people per bus = 100K buses. If each bus made 10 trips, that's still 10K buses. If you assigned each bus to one of 100 evacuation depots around the city, that's 100 buses per depot. It would take a remarkable team to manage a depot like that, and you would need 100 such teams. Plus 30K drivers. Plus refueling logistics. Plus pit crews. "Just put them on buses" is easy to write and enormously hard to pull off.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > 6 million people How many in low lying, flood prone areas?
  - dx034 9y ago
    How many school busses do you have in 500mi radius? Would guess it's probably around that area. They have drivers and could be in the area in <10hrs after the plan is activated.
    - dctoedt 9y ago
      > They have drivers and could be in the area in <10hrs after the plan is activated. You think so, eh? What percentage of drivers do you think would show up, given that many of their families would be in danger themselves?
      - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
        In a 500 mile radius? Not many of their families would be in (real) danger.
dionmanu 9y ago
I was living in Houston at the time and I was in one of those cars stuck in the freeway. It took us roughly 40 hours to reach Dallas. It is also important to mention that we were fleeing Hurricane Rita (category 5 at some point), only a month after Hurricane Katrina. Memories of the damages caused by Hurricane Katrina played a major role in our decision to evacuate.
mc32 9y ago
NPR touches on this[1], while they agree that putting people on gridlocked highways is counterproductive, they do wonder why the mayor had yet to call for an evacuation when it was now clear where people should evacuate from. Being that they now know the areas in danger and the areas not. [1]http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/28/546721363/why-didn-t-officials-order-the-evacuation-of-houston http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/28/546721363/...
- oddlyaromatic 9y ago
  They do "wonder why" but then they list the various explanations and tradeoffs that have been made given the nature of the storm and the risks of the evacuation itself. The questioning is a rhetorical and slightly click-baity device, not actual disagreement, as far as I could tell.
  - mc32 9y ago
    NPR followed up with Lieutenant General Honore of hurricane Katrina and Rita experience[1] and he disagreed with the mayor's orders. [1]http://www.npr.org/2017/08/29/546978194/with-much-of-houston-still-underwater-rescue-efforts-continue http://www.npr.org/2017/08/29/546978194/with-much-of-houston...
    - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
      That is good information and a good point of view to have, but it doesn't change your earlier misstatement about NPR, itself, "wondering why", which is the thing I was trying to add context to. (maybe you didn't mean it that way, I'm cranky ;))

org3432 9y ago

Why didn't they use trains or buses? That seems like a more obvious approach IMO.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
You're not from Texas, are you.
mozumder 9y ago
lol what trains & buses?
brewdad 9y ago
There are no trains. The nearest Amtrak station is in San Antonio. If you made it that far, you are probably already out of danger. As for buses, how do you coordinate bus plans for 6.5 million people across a 50 mile by 50 mile area? And then, assuming you could get even a million people onto buses, where do you take them that can handle even a hundred thousand refugees on 24-48 hours notice? For most of the US, and especially a city built like Houston, there are no good options. Edit: I underestimated the size of the Houston Metro Area. It's closer to 100 miles by 100 miles.
- tzs 9y ago
  > There are no trains. The nearest Amtrak station is in San Antonio. There's a station in Beaumont, which is closer than San Antonio.
- jen20 9y ago
  No trains? https://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2Station/Station_Page&code=HOS https://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2... That said, it's still not enough to even come close to evacuating a city like Houston.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  You don't need a station, you just need a track. You can load at any point where there's a track with a flat area beside it. The tricks are getting people to that loading point (without their cars, because you don't have enough parking for what you're trying to do), and getting the trains from that point to out of town without having to cross a flooded area. Houston has plenty of tracks. I presume it has flat areas next to tracks. Getting out of town without having to cross flooding? I don't know. Enough tracks to hold the traffic that would be needed? Probably not.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    Forgot tracks, what about actual trains. The passenger rail system in Texas is tiny.
throwayit 9y ago
1) Houston is one of the biggest metros areas in America at ~6 million. Even cities with strong public transportation wouldn't have the resources to bus and train 6 million people 2) There aren't many train lines, passenger trains, and most of the lines are inaccessible to most of the city. 3) There are not many buses in the city as the city is hugely sprawled out so public transportation is weak. However, even if Rita happened to a city like say Boston, with strong public transportation options, the disaster would be pretty similar. The traffic infrastructure just isn't there to transport 6 million+ people no matter what vehicle.
- ej_campbell 9y ago
  Why is that an okay situation to be in? Given things floods, dirty bombs, etc. have a non-zero chance of happening, shouldn't cities, states and countries have the infrastructure to perform mass-evacuations if necessary?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Why is that an okay situation to be in? Because the cost to not be in it is enormous.
    - ej_campbell 9y ago
      Enormous compared to what? We spend 3.2 trillion a year on Medicare, which is 9.9K a person [1]. Imagine if just 1K per person per year (300B) was spent on infrastructure every year to make mass evacuations over a few days possible. Imagine how great normal day to day travel would be once that is in place, city by city. [1] https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Enormous compared to what? Enormous compared to the value provided. > We spend 3.2 trillion a year on Medicare No, we don't. As your own source says, it is only $646 billion on Medicare, and $3.2 trillion a year in total combined public and private healthcare expenditures. > Imagine if just 1K per person per year (300B) was spent on infrastructure every year to make mass evacuations over a few days possible. Then it still probably wouldn't be enough, and we'd get a lot more value for nearly doubling infrastructure spending [0] if we spent it on something else. [0] $416 billion/year in 2014, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52463 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52463
iamnotlarry 9y ago
6 million people / 60 people per bus = 100K buses. If each bus made 10 trips, that's still 10K buses. If you assigned each bus to one of 100 evacuation depots around the city, that's 100 buses per depot. It would take a remarkable team to manage a depot like that, and you would need 100 such teams. Plus 30K drivers. Plus refueling logistics. Plus pit crews. "Just put them on buses" is easy to write and enormously hard to pull off.
- flukus 9y ago
  > 6 million people How many in low lying, flood prone areas?
- dx034 9y ago
  How many school busses do you have in 500mi radius? Would guess it's probably around that area. They have drivers and could be in the area in <10hrs after the plan is activated.
  - dctoedt 9y ago
    > They have drivers and could be in the area in <10hrs after the plan is activated. You think so, eh? What percentage of drivers do you think would show up, given that many of their families would be in danger themselves?
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      In a 500 mile radius? Not many of their families would be in (real) danger.

dionmanu 9y ago

I was living in Houston at the time and I was in one of those cars stuck in the freeway. It took us roughly 40 hours to reach Dallas. It is also important to mention that we were fleeing Hurricane Rita (category 5 at some point), only a month after Hurricane Katrina. Memories of the damages caused by Hurricane Katrina played a major role in our decision to evacuate.

mc32 9y ago

NPR touches on this[1], while they agree that putting people on gridlocked highways is counterproductive, they do wonder why the mayor had yet to call for an evacuation when it was now clear where people should evacuate from. Being that they now know the areas in danger and the areas not. [1]http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/28/546721363/why-didn-t-officials-order-the-evacuation-of-houston http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/28/546721363/...

oddlyaromatic 9y ago
They do "wonder why" but then they list the various explanations and tradeoffs that have been made given the nature of the storm and the risks of the evacuation itself. The questioning is a rhetorical and slightly click-baity device, not actual disagreement, as far as I could tell.
- mc32 9y ago
  NPR followed up with Lieutenant General Honore of hurricane Katrina and Rita experience[1] and he disagreed with the mayor's orders. [1]http://www.npr.org/2017/08/29/546978194/with-much-of-houston-still-underwater-rescue-efforts-continue http://www.npr.org/2017/08/29/546978194/with-much-of-houston...
  - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
    That is good information and a good point of view to have, but it doesn't change your earlier misstatement about NPR, itself, "wondering why", which is the thing I was trying to add context to. (maybe you didn't mean it that way, I'm cranky ;))