"South" out of Houston requires a boat.

Roads heading east were mostly open, though that was because everything in that direction was either destroyed or booked up due to Katrina. Also note, Rita ended up hitting east of Houston. My neighbors who evacuated to the east ended up in worse conditions than those who stayed here!

-Blast

I've been stuck in traffic a couple times. One issue I've seen is automatic transmissions get too hot sitting like that since most people leave it in drive and let it sit and idle to keep the ac running. This causes heat to build up in the torque converter. So if your driving an automatic get a cooler and add it on, if yours already has the factory cooler get a larger one.
People try to make U turns in the middle of the road because it looks like its just grass, well its not. The center divider of a highway is designed to trap a vehicle to prevent you from driving across into the other lane going the wrong way and to allow water drainage. That center is grass on top of soft sand that you will sink into and people don't realize this so they get tired of waiting and cut into the center and get stuck, only a few true 4x4's can make it through most places, people with AWD cars, front wheel drive and 2 wheel drive are going to sink in.

Blast's list hit Katrina evac from New Orleans to Birmingham, Al right on the head. Except I had to wait till Katrina had made land fall. I thought that it would be like blast said every body that was going would have been gone the day before but it didn't work out that way. It took me 28 hours (two hours for a quick nap in my truck)to make the 6 hour drive. All the small towns along the way were not letting anyone in except in life or death emergencies, and no gas, food, or water wasn't considered an emergency. I wasn't able to get gas until Hattisburg before I could get gas. When we were able to leave the interstate all the stations within 4 miles of the interstate were either full of cars or out of gas. I heard of a few instances of armed bad guy's, but being a single man in a very large 4X4 with a shot gun in the rear window I guesse didn't make a very enticing target.

Call me naiive, but I don't suppose anyone from any local, state or government agency has done any sort of inquiry of the people who evacuated to find out what went wrong and (just maybe) how to fix it next time? I keep hoping for common sense to break out somewhere...

Let me clarify something, the few storms that I have evacuated from have been small ones that affected much smaller areas than Katrina and Rita. For those events, my method worked fine.

Because of Katrina and Rita, local/state govt's, IMHO, will now call for evacuations of coastal areas, than those areas just inland, and finally those low lying areas farther inland. I don't think that the govt's involved will put off the decision making as long as they have tended to in the past. If anything, they are going to call for evacuations earlier (probably too early) and no doubt needlessly, for some areas. This means that large scale public evacuations on the Katrina/Rita scales are going to be more frequent.

Some of the areas that haven't been addressed, as I see it:
1) Gas stations along Evacuation Routes are not being required (new construction) to have larger gasoline/diesel storage capacity.

2) Shelter supplies are not being procured and pre-positioned in sufficient quantities.

3)Shelter supplies that have been procured and pre-positioned are not being adequately stored under the proper storage conditions.

4) I'm not seeing any pre-hurricane/evacuation public education campaign being conducted except to maybe small groups here and there.

The lessons that all of us here, and a few PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. around the country, have always known or recently learned are:
1) You will wait a long, dry, hungry, and insecure time waiting for any level of govt to arrive to bail you out of the situation you've allowed yourself to be in.

2) "Just in Time delivery" doesn't work well in evacuation situations.

3) The govt's advice about having 72 hours of supplies on hand is BUNK! I know that because on those same web pages, they also then advise people to have more than that in order to be "properly prepared".

4) I am reminded that these are the same people who brought us the Vietnam War, a socialized welfare dependant system, Crime safety through Gun Control, etc, etc...

Actually, yes they have at least here in Texas. The governor, a bunch of mayors of affected towns, emergency rescue workers, police, and logistics experts sat down in town meetings and listened to people's experiences. From that they set in place several plans such as:
1. A formal plan to make I-45 and several other roads contraflow (you can drive north in the south-bound lanes).
2. Arranged to make sure more gasoline was available.
3. Pre-positioning supplies at several major relief centers (risky proposition, people will complain about the money spent if the supplies aren't used ).
4.Set up a network of traffic control police throughout the state to direct traffic. Small town cops worked 20-hour shifts directing traffic outside of Houston. Next time they'll have help.
5. Set up a program to teach people when to evacuate and when to stay. (Next time it'll be a lot harder to convince people to leave!).

They set up more than just this, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

-Blast

That's a relief. I just hope they follow through, because let's face it, a majority of the people evacuating are likely to be somewhere between "somewhat under-prepared" and "completely unprepared."

Just remembered another, in the next evacuation they'll preposition tanker trucks at rest-stops and several other spots as mobile gas stations.

Last summer Houston had a big "Run from water, hide from wind!" promotion to teach people when to evacuate and when to stay. I haven't seen anything like that this year but it's early.

-Blast

With the price of gas now days pretty soon you won't have to worry about being "stuck in traffic" because there will be no traffic........that's what I keep saying to myself and then I keep calling myself a liar because I see more and more traffic.

I think that the rasing price of gas in one way that Bush is paying for the wars of liberation that we are having now days.

I don't know about in your neck of the woods but here gas is at $3.65 per gallon.

Only have left 72 gallons of the 1,000 gallons that I pre-paid for $1.69 per about two years ago, pretty soon I'll be one of you.....using my scooters more now days with 85 miles per gallon.

I wish gas prices where that low here!

I'm paying about $4.00 KYD per gallon (about $4.76 USD). In all honesty, its not bad (compared to some caribbean islands), but after hurricane Ivan, today's prices were a pipe dream.

And it usually takes 2 months for prices to take effect, so what we are paying now is what it cost 2 months ago to purchase the petro/gas. I'm dreading the next 6 months.

Kris