I disagree. They knew the storm was coming. The national guard was called in. You start announcements to evacuate and you start sending in buses, school buses, whatever you may have available; you open up the expressway and roadways to go one way on a path out -- you take people to the closest area that is figured to be safe and you put them up in their shelters, hotels, arenas, schools, etc. It's been done in other parts of the country. So instead of evacuating people he left people in harms way with no way to get out. They are now stuck with rising water and additional rain fall for days. Yes, no one knew it was going to be a Cat 4 with this much rain and a higher than expected storm surge, but when you have a Cat 3 coming at you, you don't just sit there and do nothing! It boils down to they were absolutely unprepared - shame on them!
@libertybele, anyone who wanted to evacuate could have. I didn't even consider evacuating (due to my location), but if I had, I wouldn't have known which way to go since the storm was predicted to be a threat all the way from Central Texas to Louisiana. The coastal communities would have to be the first to leave. Galvestonians could only leave via one Interstate (I-45) because the other ways off the island were slow (ferry) or ill-advised because of where the storm was headed (San Luis Pass). Then you work inland from there. Hitchcock, Santa Fe, La Marque, Texas City, Dickinson, League City, Webster, Clear Lake, etc. Eventually you can let Houstonians evacuate. There simply wasn't enough time for such an evacuation. Perhaps if there had been a couple of weeks to corral the citizens, there may have been a way. I'm with Mayor Turner on this. I was ineligible to vote for him since I'm not in Harris County, but had I been eligible, I would not have. But he's right on this.
