View from the front lines in Houston: humanitarian disaster

[kf5nd]

I live in Houston, 1 mile from a major hurricane evacuation route. The period from Wednesday night to today can only be described as a humanitarian disaster.

Cars in a line as long as you can see, moving at 0 - 5 MPH in 100 degree heat. Running out of gas. Overheating. People breaking down into tears.

Since there was no gas, I really didn't want to drive anywhere, so I stuffed some water bottles into my jersey, and tied my can of lawmower gas on my bike, and gave these away to people.

For people without kids or pets, bike evac would've been much better. Really. Scan your important docs, put everything vital on a 1 gig USB drive, and pedal away.

Rita is coming tonight. We expect Tropical Storm winds at this locale.

[Dchiefransom]

A hearty "Be Well" to all those in the path of the storm.

[-phaedrus-]

batten down the hatches! good luck kf5nd.

[dobber]

Since there was no gas, I really didn't want to drive anywhere, so I stuffed some water bottles into my jersey, and tied my can of lawmower gas on my bike, and gave these away to people.
.

Hopefully your kindness will be returned in time.

[Longhorn]

I've just read two horrible accounts of leaving Houston, one going north on 45 to Dallas and one going west on 10 to San Antonio. Both are heartbreaking. No way this evacuation is the success that some officials have been claiming. Maybe it's the best that can be done but, sadly, it isn't good enough. :(

[EXCALIBUR]

kf5nd,

Our heartfelt prayers go out to you. Good luck.

[chemcycle]

The period from Wednesday night to today can only be described as a humanitarian disaster.

Cars in a line as long as you can see, moving at 0 - 5 MPH in 100 degree heat. Running out of gas. Overheating. People breaking down into tears.

Slow moving cars and no gas is not a humanitarian disaster. I can't get worked up over a traffic jam after I saw the effects of Katrina....

The disaster is yet to come.....

[kf5nd]

So, 25 people burning to death on the evacuation is not a disaster?

2500, 250, or 25 dead... it's all a disaster.

And there were other deaths that will never reach the national news... heart attacks, heat strokes, etc. We heard about them, but you might not.

It wasn't just "a traffic jam". It was a 100 mile long traffic jam on three freeways. 2,000,000 people were on the move.



Slow moving cars and no gas is not a humanitarian disaster. I can't get worked up over a traffic jam after I saw the effects of Katrina....

The disaster is yet to come.....

[chemcycle]

So, 25 people burning to death on the evacuation is not a disaster?

Is that what you were refering to? You saw that? That was a disaster. You didn't mention it....

It wasn't just "a traffic jam". It was a 100 mile long traffic jam on three freeways. 2,000,000 people were on the move.

Oh the humanity......

[samundsen]

The freeways were not the only roads congested to a stand-still. The main road outside my subdivision, Stuebner Airline was packed all day yesterday. I went out on my bike up to a local Walgreens to get some more AAA batteries for a couple of radios, and I was riding in between the cars. It was surreal. I had one guy yelling at me "I'll wrestle you for your bike!". And this was in an area that was NOT marked for evacuation.

[cheg]

Maybe after 10 or 20 more Cat 4-5 hurricanes hitting major cities people will realize that it's possible to evacuate 2,000,000 people in 3 days but not possible to evacuate 1,500,000 automobiles in 3 days.

Good luck, stay safe.

[false_cause]

I had an experience being with lots of other people who can't get anywhere, but all need to get somewhere. The extremes of peoples' good and bad come out so clearly. I wish you the best of the former and the least of the latter. Good luck.

[MarkS]

When I see the pictures of the evacuations, I can't help but notice the empty lanes going opposite to the main flow. Couldn't some of these lanes be commandeered (with cones, police barricades, etc.) so that more traffic could go in the desired direction?

Where is the out-of-the-box thinking that's necessary in an emergency situation?

[false_cause]

When I see the pictures of the evacuations, I can't help but notice the empty lanes going opposite to the main flow. Couldn't some of these lanes be commandeered (with cones, police barricades, etc.) so that more traffic could go in the desired direction?

Where is the out-of-the-box thinking that's necessary in an emergency situation?

As with all things bureaucratic, it took time. Eventually the opposing lanes of most major highways bore counter-directional traffic. Whether the amount of time it took was acceptable will surely be a point of contention should Rita prove widely destructive.

[Longhorn]

Not only did it take too long, the contra-flow lanes apparently didn't open until too far outside the city limits. Many people didn't reach them until they had already been seven or eight hours on the road, having traveled a distance that would normally take no more than an hour. Gas trucks that the state was supposed to provide did not arrive and there was no gas for hundreds of miles outside of Houston.

There are people still stranded on the side of the road with no place to go and the storm is predicted to hit in just a few hours. :(

[lilHinault]

Geez, what do they do when the storm passes? Dig foxholes in the median strip? For sure they'd need to get to the windward of their cars, which will be blown around.

[kf5nd]

Hey thanks, it was very mild here in Houston.

Unfortunately, most cars I saw had 3 - 4 occupants. Some had more. They were completely full. Not sure you get same # of people into fewer cars.

Really, if 5%, 10% of people could get away from the coast on bikes, that might take enough pressure off of the system to improve throughput for everyone.




Maybe after 10 or 20 more Cat 4-5 hurricanes hitting major cities people will realize that it's possible to evacuate 2,000,000 people in 3 days but not possible to evacuate 1,500,000 automobiles in 3 days.

Good luck, stay safe.

[alanbikehouston]

At 10 a.m. Saturday, it seems evident that Houston and Galveston have gotten off easy. Our friends and neighbors in Louisiana have gotten the worst of the storm.

The only danger in Houston is the lies being spread by politicians. They are on TV bragging that they have everything under control. It is a lie. There are no police on the streets. There is no gasoline in the city. All major stores are closed. The lie that "all is well" will bring back millions of people to a city that as of today, is NOT ready.

The politicians need to stop lying and start getting gasoline and food into the region. We need National Guard on the streets so that the managers at Krogers will come out of hiding and reopen their stores.

But, again, it is the folks in Lousiana who are really hurting. The Red Cross and Salvation Army are doing a wonderful job. The government officials are gonna do what they do best: claim that due to THEIR efforts all is well. Not true. Please help the Red Cross and Salvation Army in any way you can. And, do not believe a word said by the governor of Texas.

[cheg]

Busses? Trains?

[Guest]

---> I've got my fingers crossed for you all in Houston. My relatives who evacuated New Orleans in the ninth ward and St. Benard were evacuated to Houston. Hell no, they weren't about to go through the evacuation again. They stayed put and they're ok, since they moved to apartments and houses of other relatives in Houston that were in higher areas. It is disheartening to see the whole place seems to have reflooded in New Orleans again, with more rain expected. :(

Koffee

[John C. Ratliff]

I think this has some implications for all of us. In my area (Pacific Northwest), there was recently an article in the Oregonian about the region not being ready for a magnatude 9 earthquake. If this earthquake does occur, then we would have problems even greater than seen in Texas with Hurricane Rita. Roads would have bridges down, buildings down, tunnels closed. People would need to hang on for five or more days. To get out, it seems the only practical mode of transportation would be to either walk, or use a touring or mountain bike with panniers and the ability to haul sleeping bags, tents, clothes, food and water.

After seeing this massive traffic jam in Texas, and people spending 18+ hours to go 40 miles, we could walk faster. A person with a good pack frame could go 2-3 mph, and in ten hours be 20 to 30 miles away. Given three days notice, a walking person could get significantly far away to make a difference. On a bicycle, 12 mph would allow someone to get 120 miles away in 10-18 hours on roadways were this speed could be maintained.

But all this in predicated on the physical fitness levels to be able to do this. In America today, with the car dependency we have and the levels of physical fitness we have, most of the population would not be able to huff it out on foot or on a bicycle. That is itself also says something about us.

John

[dedhed]

I think this has some implications for all of us. In my area (Pacific Northwest), there was recently an article in the Oregonian about the region not being ready for a magnatude 9 earthquake. If this earthquake does occur, then we would have problems even greater than seen in Texas with Hurricane Rita. Roads would have bridges down, buildings down, tunnels closed. People would need to hang on for five or more days. To get out, it seems the only practical mode of transportation would be to either walk, or use a touring or mountain bike with panniers and the ability to haul sleeping bags, tents, clothes, food and water.

After seeing this massive traffic jam in Texas, and people spending 18+ hours to go 40 miles, we could walk faster. A person with a good pack frame could go 2-3 mph, and in ten hours be 20 to 30 miles away. Given three days notice, a walking person could get significantly far away to make a difference. On a bicycle, 12 mph would allow someone to get 120 miles away in 10-18 hours on roadways were this speed could be maintained.

But all this in predicated on the physical fitness levels to be able to do this. In America today, with the car dependency we have and the levels of physical fitness we have, most of the population would not be able to huff it out on foot or on a bicycle. That is itself also says something about us.

John

Yes, it says the population is not made up entirely of only 20-30 something, single, fit backpackers. I couldn't see my 6 year old or my 78 yo mother doing any of those things.

[lilHinault]

I think this has some implications for all of us. In my area (Pacific Northwest), there was recently an article in the Oregonian about the region not being ready for a magnatude 9 earthquake. If this earthquake does occur, then we would have problems even greater than seen in Texas with Hurricane Rita. Roads would have bridges down, buildings down, tunnels closed. People would need to hang on for five or more days. To get out, it seems the only practical mode of transportation would be to either walk, or use a touring or mountain bike with panniers and the ability to haul sleeping bags, tents, clothes, food and water.

After seeing this massive traffic jam in Texas, and people spending 18+ hours to go 40 miles, we could walk faster. A person with a good pack frame could go 2-3 mph, and in ten hours be 20 to 30 miles away. Given three days notice, a walking person could get significantly far away to make a difference. On a bicycle, 12 mph would allow someone to get 120 miles away in 10-18 hours on roadways were this speed could be maintained.

But all this in predicated on the physical fitness levels to be able to do this. In America today, with the car dependency we have and the levels of physical fitness we have, most of the population would not be able to huff it out on foot or on a bicycle. That is itself also says something about us.

John

OK I'm in the bay area. We have a huge quake, where am I supposed to go? Up to Napa, with a million other refugees? To the central valley, which has farms and enough food etc to support the farmhands, not a million visitors? I supposed I could head 400+ miles down to socal, where I know a few people and know the area. Is that really better than just hanging tight and staying cool? I suspect a big quake would mess up the water lines, nat. gas lines (fires galore) and could create a few million "refugees" in that, no place to live (house/apt unsafe or in a pile) no job because the place is a mess, little or no food or water.

Hmm! It could be a nice time for me personally, to go look up friends in SoCal! But that's a 400-500 mile ride. Meanwhile I know ppl up here too, more of them now, and those of us who made it through the initial quake at least won't have water all over everything, it's rubble but it's OUR rubble and it's dry lol!

[Seanholio]

One should prepare for this kind of thing. We've witnessed that it takes FOREVER to evacuate a city. Some say it is impossible.

Make a plan. If you're going to have to evacuate a city, what will you need? In Houston, it seems that people needed a car, but didn't consider that traffic might not move as quickly as they required to evacuate on a single tank of fuel without turning off the engine when stopped. It was 100 degrees, and chances are the humidity was in the 90's. This sucks, no matter how used to it you get. What workarounds are there? Can someone tolerate high temp and humidity for a while by turning off their car and exiting the vehicle? Is this a good idea? It sounds better than being stranded on the side of the road with a big hurricane coming. Could they have carried extra fuel, assuming they'd put it in a gas can before all local sources were depleted.

These kinds of things go through my head, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a blessing and a curse that we cannot receive warnings of earthquakes. This means that supplies will not be unavailable leading up to the disaster, and there won't be millions of people trying to drive out before the hammer falls, but it also means you are unlikely to get more than what you've already set aside as disaster preparedness foods for several days after a big one.

When the quake of '89, a 7.1, hit the Bay Area, many were caught off guard, but the buildings were mostly intact, and most services were out for a limited period of time. My family had flashlights and candles, from previous power outtages, battery-powered radios for news, and the 50-gallon water heater was able to provide water had we lost service. Our pantry was full, so we had no worries about being able to eat, but we had no way to cook the dried foods, so we purchased a Coleman stove.

Since that quake, I've always tried to maintain enough food and water for my family to survive at least a week. Many look at this is a daunting task. Take it in stages:

1. What do I need for my family to survive for 1-day? Buy that.
2. What do I need to extend that to three days? Buy that.
3. What do I need to extened that to a week? Buy that.

There are many websites out there which provide information on this subject. The person who cares most about your survival is you, and therefore you should take responsiblity to ensure that you do survive. FEMA, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army might help you, but they might not be able to get to you for several days, if at all. Good luck.

[John C. Ratliff]

Yes, it says the population is not made up entirely of only 20-30 something, single, fit backpackers. I couldn't see my 6 year old or my 78 yo mother doing any of those things.
Dedhed,

You're right about that, but what I'm trying to do is to get people to realize that there are alternatives in an evacuation. If you'll remember the Asian Tsunami, you'll see that the people who survived did so on foot. In Oregon, if there is a tsunami warning, people are instructed NOT to evacuate by vehicle, but to get to high ground by foot. In the case of the Houston evacuation, if the 20-30 somethings who could get out either via foot, bicycle or motorcycle were encouraged to do so, that could have freed up much needed real estate for those who had no choice. If there were 20-30% fewer vehicles trying to get out, I think the getting out would have gone better. Emergency planners are talking only about how to get people out in this kind of evacuation via vehicle; perhaps if we tried, we could provide some alternatives that make both modes of transport more viable.

There is a physical fitness component to this too, and I think that should be used to try promoting lifestyle changes which enhance our population's fitness. There were some otherwise healthy people who could not walk more than a few blocks in New Orleans because they had not done it in a long, long time before the flood occurred. But we as a species are capable of long migrations on foot. That is how we populated the world, mostly (granted, some went by water, but a lot was by walking).

There are alternatives to travel by cars.

John

[Ganesha]

I was in San Jose also in the 89 quake. We had power backup in under 30 minutes. With no disruption of water or gas. Had there been disruption, my family would of faired pretty well. We had 110 gallons of drinking water + what ever was in the water heater, at least 80 pounds in uncooked rice, a lot of chopped wood and everything you would need to cook over a wood fire. My mother and father grew up on third world farms with no electricity/running water so they have a slight food stockpiling mentality. When I left for college they made me take 40 pounds of uncooked rice with me, just in case something happened. They try to make me take a bag of rice every time I visit them.

[Daily Commute]

alanbikehouston and kf5nd, I'm glad you were spared the worst.

[John C. Ratliff]

I live in Houston, 1 mile from a major hurricane evacuation route. The period from Wednesday night to today can only be described as a humanitarian disaster.

Cars in a line as long as you can see, moving at 0 - 5 MPH in 100 degree heat. Running out of gas. Overheating. People breaking down into tears.

Since there was no gas, I really didn't want to drive anywhere, so I stuffed some water bottles into my jersey, and tied my can of lawmower gas on my bike, and gave these away to people.

For people without kids or pets, bike evac would've been much better. Really. Scan your important docs, put everything vital on a 1 gig USB drive, and pedal away.

Rita is coming tonight. We expect Tropical Storm winds at this locale.
Peter,

Sorry to have steered this away from the Houston problems and tragedy on the bus. Can you give us an update on what is happening as people come back?

John

[trackhub]

Hey thanks, it was very mild here in Houston.

Glad you are Ok.

Most "experts" (I do not know who these experts are, or what qualifies them as such, hence the quotation marks. I guess they're MIT and Harvard professor types.) say that the Boston area would not fare any better in an emergency such as this. Given what the highways leading up to New Hampshire and Maine look like on a Friday afternoon (From spring to late fall) when nothing is wrong, I think they're probably right.

Is it possible that because of this, some people will realize that there are just too many cars on the road already, and that other modes of transportation must be considered?

[chemcycle]

Hey thanks, it was very mild here in Houston.

A mild humanitarian crisis perhaps?


I'm glad you (along with Houston in general) are safe, even if I'm being an *ss..... :rolleyes:

[LCI_Brian]

Most "experts" (I do not know who these experts are, or what qualifies them as such, hence the quotation marks. I guess they're MIT and Harvard professor types.) say that the Boston area would not fare any better in an emergency such as this. Given what the highways leading up to New Hampshire and Maine look like on a Friday afternoon (From spring to late fall) when nothing is wrong, I think they're probably right.

Is it possible that because of this, some people will realize that there are just too many cars on the road already, and that other modes of transportation must be considered?
In many cities, there are freeways that have slow bumper to bumper traffic at rush hour. Since not everyone works, it's only a fraction of the city's population stuck in that traffic at that moment. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that gridlock is inevitable if you're evacuating the whole city population on these same roads.

Even in a city where cars are the predominant mode of transport, it seems to me that you could bring in a bunch of extra Amtrak and/or commuter trains to get the people out of the city.

[alanbikehouston]

Slow moving cars and no gas is not a humanitarian disaster. I can't get worked up over a traffic jam after I saw the effects of Katrina....

The disaster is yet to come.....

I stayed in Houston, but I've talked with folks who spent 24 hours driving about 200 miles. Temperatures inside their vehicles, if the engine was off, or the AC was off reached 110 or 120 degrees inside the vehicles. Because folks had packed enough water and drinks for a four hour drive, people became dehydrated after running out of liquids. Elderly folks and infants suffered the most. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of people trapped in the evacuation needed to be taken to hospitals along the evacuation route. Some died. Others are in serious condition.

The politicians have been injuring their arms patting themselves on the back over the "successful" evacuation. There would have been far less suffering if fuel trucks and water trucks, and first aid stations had been pre-positioned every ten miles or so along each of the five major evacuation routes. Fifty such stations would have prevented much human suffering.

Houston officials have had general evacuation plans for years. And, while Rita was approaching, a week was spent making detailed plans for the evacuation. No thought was given to guaranteeing adequate supplies of fuel and water along escape routes.

Many local citizens and churches on the roads between Houston and Dallas, Houston and Austin, and Houston and San Antonio were going out to the roadside and providing water, first aid, and offereing shelter to those who were out of fuel. Everyday folks did FAR more to make the evacuation bearable than anything the politicians did.

But, in defense of the evacuation: less than a hundred people died during the evacuation and during the storm. Without the evacuation, the death toll would have been far higher. By a twist of fate, the storm struck medium size and small communities in Texas and Louisiana, rather than Houston. Those communities have lost thousands of homes, but lost very few lives. The evacuation is the major reason those lives were saved.

Who WOULD have been killed if Rita had made a direct hit on Houston? Six hours before Rita reached land, I toured around my neighborhood. Typically, there are a hundred or so homeless people wandering the streets within a mile or so of where I live. As the storm approached, the homeless were on sidewalks and at bus stops along the major streets. They had heard rumors that the city would send buses to pick them up and take them to a safe shelter. There were NO such buses. There were no shelters set up for the homeless, unless they were a well kept secret. The City of Houston "plan" did not include homeless people.

[bennyk]

Even in a city where cars are the predominant mode of transport, it seems to me that you could bring in a bunch of extra Amtrak and/or commuter trains to get the people out of the city.

Yeah, but think of how impossible it would be to coordinate this...

People in zip code 11102 MUST report to the Amtrak station at 8:12am to evacuate by train?
People in zip code 11201 MUST use automobile transportation to leave town?

Traffic jams would happen just on the way to the Amtrak station...

Or, do you just strongly suggest that people use the trains? Millions would still prefer to drive because they would think it's more comfortable.

I'd be amazed if we noticed any difference.
bk

[LCI_Brian]

I'm thinking that they should just provide the trains and allow people to choose whether to use them. After hearing the stories of traffic, I'm sure there would be enough people to choose the train rather than sit in hours of traffic trying to evacuate.

[Seanholio]

The politicians have been injuring their arms patting themselves on the back over the "successful" evacuation. There would have been far less suffering if fuel trucks and water trucks, and first aid stations had been pre-positioned every ten miles or so along each of the five major evacuation routes. Fifty such stations would have prevented much human suffering.

...

Many local citizens and churches on the roads between Houston and Dallas, Houston and Austin, and Houston and San Antonio were going out to the roadside and providing water, first aid, and offereing shelter to those who were out of fuel. Everyday folks did FAR more to make the evacuation bearable than anything the politicians did...

Am I the only one who interprets the above statements as "Ordinary citizens and religeous organizations did the lion's share of the work in saving lives during the evacuation; let's ask the politicians to do more, since they performed so poorly last time."

I honestly don't see giving more power over my survival to those who care the least about it as a wise course of action.

[Hal Hardy]

I wonder how many good old boys loaded up their 4X4's, drove west till they got to the desert, then rolled off the road, turned north and had a hurricane party 200 miles out in the boondocks? Or would they hit Dallas by then?

[Orikal]

I wonder how many good old boys loaded up their 4X4's, drove west till they got to the desert, then rolled off the road, turned north and had a hurricane party 200 miles out in the boondocks? Or would they hit Dallas by then?

200 miles West would take you not much West of San Antonio/Austin, which while arid, is by no means a desert. You're perhaps thinking more of El Paso, which is roughly a 20 hour drive on I-10. Dallas is ~250 miles North.

At any rate, it was taking most people 20 or so hours to get to Dallas, and 17-ish to reach San Antonio/Austin. My wife and I drove to a near North suburb which usually takes 20-30 minutes from our house, but took 4 hours on back roads.

[Hal Hardy]

200 miles West would take you not much West of San Antonio/Austin, which while arid, is by no means a desert.

Actually, I was thinking of the tumbleweed country west of Houston. To us Easterners, that terrain qualifies as a class II desert. :p

The nonmountainous areas of the west have an advantage in these situations. If you have a vehicle set up for the terrain and can get out of town with enough supplies and gas to put some distance between you and the threat, you aren't locked into using the road system. You don't even have to go far from the road. Just run parallel to the hiway and bypass the gridlock.

[Longhorn]

The evacuation wasn't quite the success that some government officials proclaimed it to be: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3374468

Sept. 29, 2005, 5:42AM

EVACUATION
Lessons come at high cost: 107 lives
By CINDY HORSWELL and EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

A 2-year-old Houston girl crushed beneath the wheels of a pickup; a Sugar Land man and his two young children fatally pitched from their overturning car near Madisonville; a 92-year-old La Marque woman dead after losing consciousness while stuck in highway gridlock — Hurricane Rita's tales of sorrow rolled in Wednesday as the death toll climbed.

A Chronicle survey of Houston-area counties and those along major evacuation routes to the north and west indicates that at least 107 people were killed by last week's hurricane or died in accidents or from health problems associated with the evacuation of 2.5 million people from their homes.

One day before the expected announcement of a state-county-city task force to examine the problems that plagued the exodus, which doubled or tripled the travel time between Houston and other Texas cities, Mayor Bill White conceded, "I don't think the evacuation should be a disaster in itself."

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, whose wife spent more than 12 hours in a U.S. 290 traffic jam, called for a careful review of the evacuation. "People are downplaying the fact that people died in the evacuation and that is not right," he said. "Is the chance of dying greater in the movement than in the storm? That's the question we need to consider."


Calls for improvement
At Wednesday's City Council meeting, Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a Clear Lake dermatologist who spent 19 hours in evacuation traffic, called for the immediate opening of all highway lanes to outbound traffic in the event of a future evacuation.

"It was like we were yelling 'fire,' " she said of last week's evacuation, "but all the doors were shut."

White expressed concern at the state's slow response to city requests for assistance in traffic control and extra gasoline.

"They said they had a plan," he said. "They said they had a timetable."

But there was no plan for contraflow lanes, the mayor said. So, the city asked Gov. Rick Perry's staff in the middle of the night to get contraflow lanes working, and the effort got under way immediately after that.

Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said the state immediately responded to White's 6 a.m. Thursday request to open all Interstate 45 lanes to outbound traffic, but he admitted the effort could have been executed more efficiently. Hours elapsed as 700 troopers were brought in to close entrance ramps on the southbound lanes and other measures were taken to alter traffic flow.

Traffic on I-45 North already was gridlocked when they opened all lanes to northbound traffic. Interstate 10 was completely opened for outbound traffic several hours later.

The death toll for Hurricane Rita and the evacuation continued to climb Wednesday.

Preliminary death reports from law enforcement and medical examiners included 31 fatalities in Harris County, 23 in Dallas County, 10 each in Polk and Angelina counties, 12 in Montgomery County and three each in Fort Bend, Waller and Madison counties. Another dozen died in seven other counties.


Two cases questioned
In some cases, experts dispute the criteria used to link deaths to the storm. Though it generally was accepted that the storm could indirectly kill by triggering medical crises in the frail or elderly, at least two cases were questioned by University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston ethicist Dr. William Winslade.

Winslade suggested the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office attributing the deaths of a 27-year-old schizophrenic found on a Houston street before the storm and the death of an infant who had suffered days of vomiting and diarrhea was a stretch. The Medical Examiner's office did not respond to a Chronicle inquiry about the deaths.

The deadliest single Rita-related incident came early Friday when 23 Bellaire nursing home patients were killed as a bus evacuating them to Arlington caught fire and exploded near Dallas. But the sorrow didn't stop there.

Two-year-old Angela Pérez of Houston was killed at 10 a.m. Friday when she was struck by an out-of-control pickup as her family rested on the side of U.S. 59 just south of Diboll in Angelina County. Diboll Police Chief Kent Havard said the 64-year-old driver of the truck apparently fell asleep at the wheel after spending more than 20 hours in evacuation traffic.

The driver was not charged in the accident, Havard said.

In Lufkin, Charlotte Ranger, 81, of Baytown, was struck and killed as she stepped from a chartered evacuation bus to enter a shelter, Lufkin police said.

Sugar Land resident Michael Alexander, 51, and his children, Omar, 11, and Amal, 8, were killed Sunday when their auto struck an I-45 median near Madisonville and overturned. The three, none of whom had worn seat belts, were ejected.

The family was returning from Arlington, where it had sought shelter from Rita.

Alexander's wife, Rima, was airlifted to a Temple hospital where she was in fair condition Wednesday. Another child, Dawlat, 12, escaped injury.

Law enforcement officers not prone to tears said they often wept openly as they dealt with the repercussions of the flight from Rita.

"It was horrible," said San Jacinto County Sheriff's spokesman J.J. Stitt.

Stitt helped provide a police escort for a charter bus filled with elderly residents from the Houston area en route to a local hospital. Earlier, the bus driver had made a 911 emergency call to authorities as his passengers sickened. By the time officers arrived, two were dead.

At Conroe Regional Medical Center, spokesman Fritz Guthrie said 600 patients arrived at the hospital during the evacuation — about 25 percent more than normal.

"Most of them arrived with effects of the heat — heat exhaustion and heat stroke," he said. Others came in with heart problems or blood clots in their legs from sitting too long. "We had people walking over from the freeway having babies."

La Marque resident Mary Lou Bourgeois, 92, became another Rita evacuation victim when she reluctantly joined her family fleeing via clogged I-10.

"She would never run," said her granddaughter Sheronda Bourgeois, 30. "She always said, 'If God is going to get you, he's going to get you.' "

After about 12 hours on the road Thursday — the family had gotten only as far as west Houston — the elderly woman began having difficulty breathing. She then lost consciousness. She died Friday at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital.

"We all have our self-doubt about evacuating," her granddaughter said. "No one wanted to die like those people in New Orleans and we thought we were doing the right thing by taking our grandmother with us. It's hurt the way she left us.

"We would rather her be at home, surrounded by her children and great-grandchildren."

Chronicle reporters Allan Turner, Matt Stiles, Terri Langford, Rosanna Ruiz, Cynthia Garza, Renee Lee, Todd Ackerman, Mike Tolson, Lise Olsen and Dale Lezon contributed to this report.

cindy.horswell@chron.com

edward.hegstrom@chron.com

[kf5nd]

Wonder how many of the 107 lived in areas that do not flood... probably 1/2 of them. Shame, about fifty excess deaths, then.




The evacuation wasn't quite the success that some government officials proclaimed it to be: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3374468

Sept. 29, 2005, 5:42AM

EVACUATION
Lessons come at high cost: 107 lives
By CINDY HORSWELL and EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle