Dan Minette wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "PAT MATHEWS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:32 PM
Subject: RE: Evacuation
From: "Horn, John" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Killer Bs
Discussion <[email protected]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion"
<[email protected]> Subject: RE: Evacuation Date: Wed, 21 Sep
2005 23:26:13 -0500
I know it isn't likely but if anybody is evacuating and ends up
in the St. Louis area, let me know. I'm sure we can put someone
up for a little while. Or do anything else that will help out.
Drop me a line off-list and I'll give you my particulars.
- jmh
Ditto for Albuquerque.
Thanks for all the offers, but we're going to "shelter in place."
We're about 150-200 feet above sea level and about 80 miles inland.
Plus, if the hurricane goes as it is presently forecast, the Houston
area will be on the clean side of the storm. We have friends who
live in a mobile home, and they're staying with us for the duration.
It is really kinda surrealistic. It has been very hot for this time
of year (100+) the last couple of days, calm, and there are just a
few puffy clouds today. I-45 is about 2.5 miles from my house, and
we had to go near it for my wife's appointment with her surgeon. It
was a parking lot. Traffic was moving as slow as 0.4 mph...which is
about as fast as my wife can walk after her surgery. The traffic in
our neighborhood is very uneven. Roads that go through N-S are
clogged, with a 20 minute trip on back roads lasting several hours
now. But, other roads are very empty.
The "back roads" around here (especially east of I-35) are filling up
with locals trying to avoid the parking lots that 290 and 71 have
become. It took longer than I'd have expected to get from Hutto to
Round Rock on US-79, and I think that most of that was people trying to
avoid the traffic jams to the south. (I don't expect very many people
were taking 6 out of Houston and then taking a left in Hearne....)
It's interesting to see what there is a run on. I should have known
that toilet paper would run out, but I hadn't thought of it. We were
almost out, so I was lucky to get one of the last packs of generic
toilet paper. And this was 2.5 days before the hurricane was due.
We're OK for TP for another week, at least. The shelves at the grocery
store were looking pretty bare here, though. (Glad I stocked up last week!)
The counterflow lanes are finally working on I-45, from what I've
seen on TV. They go about 200 miles....most of the way to Dallas.
That's what I'm hearing, as well.
The gas station situation is really funny. One gas station has a 50
car line, while one can almost pull up and pump a block away. It's
clearly not locals who are gassing up.
It's people who have been burning fuel in the crawl. The state is
sending in tanker trucks of fuel for those who are out of gas on the
highways. (I-45 and I-10 were the two roads I know about -- several
trucks were sent from Austin to Fayette County earlier today.)
If you get a chance to read this, Rob, I wish you all the best during
the next few days....and thanks for your good wishes. I was going to
offer to let you stay here before I read you had a place to go. We
might have wind damage, but that should be it. When we had 20-40
inches of rain over 3 days back in '94, we were high and dry. We
expect only about 2-10 inches, unless the storm stops further south
than they are predicting. I think we'll be OK until the rainfall is
up to 40 inches in 3 days.
Good luck, and I hope the wind doesn't get you badly.
We thought we'd be looking at wind speeds in the 70s, but Austin will be
getting winds more in the 20s and 30s. (The prediction is that there
will be high winds "east of I-35", which I am, but not by so much that I
figure we're in extreme danger. I'm wondering if we should bring in the
patio furniture, though, and if we should do something about the grill.
The hippo on the front porch isn't going anywhere. If it does, all
the front windows of the house will have blown out already.)
We'll get some rain, which we could use.
The Austin City Limits Festival is still on; if it gets really
dangerous, they'll call off individual events. Which means there won't
be a bunch of hotel rooms freed up, and I expect the shelters in Leander
will be full by sometime tomorrow morning. Then what the area will do,
I don't know. Open up ones on a route other than US-183, I guess --
right now, the strategy is to set up a shelter in the next school up
near that highway, but I don't know how far they'll be doing that.
Oh, and our relatives near Sugarland are opting to ride it out. I hope
they know what they're doing. (If they change their minds in the next
18 hours, we have space for them, but after that, any of our friends
contacting us get to use the space.)
Julia
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