I lived in Houston for a while. It's true that the Rita evacuation was a disaster, for multiple reasons. Even absent the traffic jams getting out of the city, I

I lived in Houston for a while. It's true that the Rita evacuation was a disaster, for multiple reasons. Even absent the traffic jams getting out of the city, I had also heard from some friends who did evacuate that there was little gas and no hotel rooms to be found for ~400 miles. I decided to stay at home, rather than risk getting stuck in the middle of the road somewhere in a car out of gas when the hurricane actually hit. It worked out pretty well. I think the big lesson of Rita was that you really, really shouldn't evacuate if you don't need to, because too many people in low-risk neighborhoods evacuating will take up all of the highway capacity, gas, and regional hotels for all of the people in flood zones that really do need to evacuate. Like seriously, don't evacuate unless being in an out-of-gas car stuck on a highway somewhere is definitely better than being at home. This was put in place for hurricane Ike, to mostly good results.