“Where do you take them? How do you get them where you want them to go?” Paulison said. “Who’s going to take care of them when they get there?” -from the article posted above.

Sage comments. It's like the whole "bug out" concept, which, while terribly "in" right now, is a horribly flawed idea.

A major metropolitan area has tons of resources - food, water, medical care, shelter, transportation and manpower. If you "bug out" voluntarily - leaving the city behind to flee into the wilderness, once you have exhausted the resources of your nifty "bug out bag", where do you get more stuff? How will you survive out of your element? Where do you find shelter? How do you connect with people who are willing to help you and avoid people who are willing to do you harm?

It's a three to four hour drive (without traffic delays) to Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin - the nearest cities of any decent size. Even using contraflow evacuation lanes (southbound interstate lanes converted to nothbound travel) which they created after the Rita evacuation fiasco, you basically only have 4 main lanes of traffic to Dallas/Ft. Worth, four to San Antonio, and four to Austin.

With strategically pre-positioned fuel tankers, water supplies, and deployed emergency personnel along these routes (something else they have implemented), you will have massive traffic jams for 150-200+ miles in every direction which may have flooded in places trapping thousands upon thousands of people out in the open with nowhere to go.

And staged evacuations do not work. The hurricane evacuation plans in place call for the folks living directly in the Coastal Zone to evacuate first, then folks further inland in Zone A next and so on. Storm surge affected areas, basically. Maybe 1 to 1.5 million people. During the Rita evacuation, people who had ZERO danger of being affected by storm surge overreacted and decided to evacuate. They estimated that 3.7 million people tried to leave. All at once. You can't control that.

You can't control irrational people with poor critical decision-making skills who aren't able to understand that those poor people in New Orleans up on their rooftops waving at helicopters lived in areas below sea level surrounded by levees that failed. Half the people in my subdivision (140' above sea level - 70 miles away from the coast) evacuated before Rita. Right now, we are still flood-free.

I want to close on a positive note. People are helping people here in the Houston area. It's what we do here in Texas. In addition to the government shelter efforts, churches and other non-governmental groups are taking in displaced people and citizens are volunteering their time and donating supplies to help those in need. The outpouring of help has been so overwhelming, that some shelters have turned away volunteers and donations. This will be a long term recovery for many people however, so please consider donating a contribution to the American Red Cross.