Hurricane Harvey -- not a hyperlocal weather post
I'm not sure how your local government works; we have Disaster Management committees that actually practice this all year, both in simulation (computer modelling etc) and with inter-agency practice runs.
For example, well before bushfire season, we're modelling and practising what we'll do if clearing fires or lightning strikes set a raging bushfire out of control in the surrounding rainforest and farmlands. We model a range of scenarios with different weather and winds, tides, traffic problems including highways breakdowns and trains out of action...
For cyclone season, it's the same: Aged Care agencies like mine have already submitted contact info of all vulnerable service users who need evacuation (I personally confirm each participant on that list is still actively needing Council help, and let Council know), Council coordinates with the volunteer Rescue Service and local Emergency services to priority-evacuate those people to pre-arranged interstate centres. Everyone has already checked their Go-bags/emergency kits (we go through that info twice a year, like you check your smoke detectors and fix your clocks). We practice emergency drills for around three days out...and we expect to be flooded in for at a week to three weeks.
And like most people everywhere, residents never think it will be so bad (until it is), so most are involved with some volunteer service either for the emergency or for recovery. Those skills and the comradeship prove invaluable, because you know there's a plan and you can work with it.
All our land here is vulnerable, under global warming; all our escape routes actually lead through one disaster or another; we're doomed regardless of the scenarios you play. But we keep practising and maximising our chances.
(Sorry for the essay, got carried away)
Actually, I agree with you to a degree. I think there should have been a better option than telling people to stay. Something between a mandatory evacuation and stay in place. Perhaps, a voluntary evacuation for low lying areas. They should have done better.
conandrob240 said:
okay, perfect then. All was handled really well. I stand corrected.
Also - although I love indie bookstores, my daughter manages a Barnes & Noble. All employees, even hourly part time workers are getting paid, as if the store was open. They have also been in touch with every employee to make sure they are OK.
Mass evacuation would have led to far more death since the roads there are designed to handle the overrun. Tens of thousands of families would have been sitting in their cars, underwater.
Edited for typo.
even at the projected 20-24" they thought a few days before, it would be catastrophic. And this is absolutely yet another example of a very poor "plan" to deal with an impending disaster.
I was born and raised in Houston. It is absolutely not possible to evacuate the entire city. It is just too big, both population and geography. And MANY people are just fine in their homes. I have been in touch with friends and family and most have dry homes and power. A few have lost power, with some already regaining it. Out of 80+ Houston-area friends and family members, I have heard from all but a half dozen or so and out of those I have heard from, three have reported water in their homes, with only one sustaining major damage (but all are personally safe with friends if not at home.) What might have been lacking (I don't know, as I wasn't there) is effective communication of information to help people decide individually about whether they needed to leave or not. Of course, it isn't over, but I stand by the statement that it would NEVER make sense to evacuate the whole city. And, two or three days ago (and even now) the forecasters really didn't know where the storm was going, so it would have been pretty hard to figure out a safe destination for such evacuation and it is highly likely that there could have been a repeat of the situation with Rita, where every highway out of town was a parking lot. In that case, people DIED because of being stuck on the roads, including one situation where a nursing home was being evacuated and there was a fire when oxygen tanks exploded, killing people on the bus.
BTW - @mommyrock just posted on Facebook that they are fine and have power (and Tequila!) and offering their spare room to any neighbor in need.
Again, there is something in between full evacuation and pretty much nothing.
conandrob240 said:
Again, there is something in between full evacuation and pretty much nothing.
Yes, but I think that if you had been the mayor 2-3 days ago, you (and the emergency management folks) would have been hard-pressed to come up with a strategy of required or recommended evacuations, considering that the weather forecasts were all over the map about where the storm would go and, therefore, where people should be sent. I doubt I can find it now, but I saw a map with about a dozen different colored tracks that pretty much went everywhere in Texas ... it looked like toddler crayon doodles and certainly did not provide enlightenment about where would be a safe place to go.
People knew the storm was coming and individuals are ALWAYS able to decide to leave (and many do) but many people don't really have places to go. It's a serious problem for coastal cities and it isn't going to get better as climate change progresses.
hi, gang! rock family is doing well. just wanted to weight in that there was a LOT of communication by our government officials to us and several areas were/are under voluntary evacuation. the problem is that nobody quite knew what areas would be hurt the worst. if they evac'd EVERYONE all along the Gulf Coast, there would have been no where to go. and many of us are fine. the news is showing you the most compelling stuff, but know that for every person you see escaping a flooding home, many, many more are safe and didn't need to leave. the impact of mass evacuations on such short notice, with so few routes out, would have been SO much worse.
My cattle-ranching friends were able to move most of their livestock to safer feedlots in West Texas, and help friends move their livestock, too. That process started about three days before Harvey made landfall; they were mustering and loading cattle during the nights in order to be safe. (Unfortunately, six cows panicked and turned back overturning one trailer and then running K and her partner, fracturing human ribs and jaws...still, livestock taken to safety, humans hospitalised for a couple of nights and now back home)
Where they are, the land was so parched from the drought that it just couldn't absorb the rain. That watertable they've been draining will be rising now. She reports all streams are flowing well.
to be clear... I'm speaking of a much larger swath than just houston. all of the areas that we're in the possible impact area is bigger than NJ, with nearly the same population. seriously, we're talking from corpus Christi to Beaumont. that's huge.
mommyrock said:
to be clear... I'm speaking of a much larger swath than just houston. all of the areas that we're in the possible impact area is bigger than NJ, with nearly the same population. seriously, we're talking from corpus Christi to Beaumont. that's huge.
Hey now! Glad you're ok and, given the available tequila, still rocking.
conandrob240 said:
Again, there is something in between full evacuation and pretty much nothing.
Like.... what? Sometimes nothing IS something. Armchair quarterbacking is easy, but when you're weighing what to do with a half million people (and then some), something along the level of commandeering every Motel 6 within a 300 mile radius isn't exactly a good DR plan. Sometimes mistakes are made, sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don't. Given the (relatively speaking) low death toll and the constant barrage they're under, they're not exactly running blind or scared as far as I can tel l but doing what they can in a one-off crisis.
"doing what they can in a one-off crisis."
Not to quibble with you, nor agree with conandrob; this is the third year in a row Houston has been inundated by a "500 year flood."
ctrzaska said:
conandrob240 said:
Again, there is something in between full evacuation and pretty much nothing.
Like.... what? Sometimes nothing IS something. Armchair quarterbacking is easy, but when you're weighing what to do with a half million people (and then some), something along the level of commandeering every Motel 6 within a 300 mile radius isn't exactly a good DR plan. Sometimes mistakes are made, sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don't. Given the (relatively speaking) low death toll and the constant barrage they're under, they're not exactly running blind or scared as far as I can tel l but doing what they can in a one-off crisis.
Not a half million. The population of the City of Houston alone is about 2 million. The metro area is over 6 million. Add in Corpus Christi and points between and it is probably over 10 million. As someone from there just posted on Facebook:
"It is impossible to evacuate a city the size of Houston. Harris County is 1700+ square miles, [and the entire metro area has] a population of 6.5 million people. How do you evacuate 6.5 million people? During the hours leading to Hurricane Rita's landfall, tens of thousands of Houstonians attempted evacuation. The traffic jams lasted for days. One hundred people died. So far, six Houstonians have died in Hurricane Harvey, all of them (as far as I have heard) drowned in their automobiles. For more than a decade, the local mantra has been "shelter in place and hunker down." That's hard, but it's the right approach."
sac said:
conandrob240 said:
Again, there is something in between full evacuation and pretty much nothing.
Yes, but I think that if you had been the mayor 2-3 days ago, you (and the emergency management folks) would have been hard-pressed to come up with a strategy of required or recommended evacuations, considering that the weather forecasts were all over the map about where the storm would go and, therefore, where people should be sent. I doubt I can find it now, but I saw a map with about a dozen different colored tracks that pretty much went everywhere in Texas ... it looked like toddler crayon doodles and certainly did not provide enlightenment about where would be a safe place to go.
People knew the storm was coming and individuals are ALWAYS able to decide to leave (and many do) but many people don't really have places to go. It's a serious problem for coastal cities and it isn't going to get better as climate change progresses.
So, there is absolutely no thought given to, nor planning for potential future disasters? You just wait and then say, wow, we only have 2-3 days, sorry, can't come up with anything here that quickly. Sorry, doesn't sound quite right. While I am thrilled the death toll is low, it seems like a major clusterf$&* of incompetence there. We'll see how it looks in hindsight after people get through it right now.
Wishing those affected a speedy end to this and somewhere safe and dry to retreat to as soon as possible.
conandrob240 said:
So, there is absolutely no thought given to, nor planning for potential future disasters?
Think how many people around here don't keep emergency water on hand even after most of MW lost their water during the last Hurricane. Let s/he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Hey Max, to make it a bit more local, it now looks like the remnants will be in our area late Sunday. How much moisture will it have left at that point in time?
Re evacuations and why they "did nothing." If sheltering in place IS the plan, and it seems to be according to people from the area - then that isn't "doing nothing." That is the local government having worked out all the options and deciding that this was the best course of action. And their response looks a LOT less messed up than the response to Katrina. I read in the NYTimes that hospitals had put in special flood-protection equipment and were still largely up and running, for example. And police are coordinating efforts pretty seamlessly with the hospitals, rescue efforts are getting people to the right places, etc. The tapping of the reservoirs yesterday was also coordinated with the right people to make sure that it went smoothly (though evidently, it didn't stop the reservoirs from flooding - just happened today).
So I think it is brutally unfair to say that the city of Houston "did nothing." They clearly did a LOT of advance planning for disasters, and given the size of this storm, the loss of life has been very small (so far anyway).
Again, if the plan is shelter in place - that is the PLAN. It is not "doing nothing."
With large cities in vulnerable locations (and all locations are vulnerable to something), there really is no other option. Consider how you would empty out NY city if there was a disaster. You simply couldn't. It stinks, but that is the price we pay for having large concentrations of population.
I agree. If things go reasonably well, the city, the county, and state, and the federal governments will look back and think of what they could have done better, but so far, the response seems good.
conandrob240 said:
So, there is absolutely no thought given to, nor planning for potential future disasters?
There's a ton of thought, planning and infrastructure built to plan for natural disasters. But it's impossible to plan for every possible eventuality.
Here's a clearheaded piece on why the non-evacuation was the right decision.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/harvey-flooding-mayor-evacuation.html?_r=0
If you plan and build so that nothing becomes a disaster, you have spent too much.
Tom_Reingold said:
If you plan and build so that nothing becomes a disaster, you have spent too much.
That said, Houston has notoriously lax/non existent building and zoning codes. It will be interesting to see what role those codes (or the lack there of) played in this disaster.
Klinker said:
That said, Houston has notoriously lax/non existent building and zoning codes. It will be interesting to see what role those codes (or the lack there of) played in this disaster.
I've already read that development went too far, turning swamp land into concrete/asphalt, leaving less space for water to go. Maybe they'll look at that, but reversing it is a huge puzzle. We have the same problem here. We are not about to convert industrial or residential land into swamps.
But there are novel solutions such as permeable road surfaces and rooftop gardens.
Tom_Reingold said:
Klinker said:
That said, Houston has notoriously lax/non existent building and zoning codes. It will be interesting to see what role those codes (or the lack there of) played in this disaster.
I've already read that development went too far, turning swamp land into concrete/asphalt, leaving less space for water to go. Maybe they'll look at that, but reversing it is a huge puzzle. We have the same problem here. We are not about to convert industrial or residential land into swamps.
But there are novel solutions such as permeable road surfaces and rooftop gardens.
I am reminded of the attempt a couple of years ago to dam the river in the Reservation in order to protect the idiots who built their homes on wetlands downstream.
If a person were to evacuate in their car how would they do it? Drive with the windows open without buckling your seat belt in case you have to swim out of the window? I imagine it's a roll of the dice because the levels of water varies.
Houston Police Officer Drowns in Patrol Car
http://www.thedailybeast.com/houston-police-officer-drowns-in-patrol-car
Four Children and Grandparents Swept away in Submerged Van
http://abc13.com/4-children-grandparents-swept-away-in-flood-on-greens-bayou/2353888/
There are some incidents coming out of Texas, and likely will be many more, which made me cry. This is one of them. Although it's a "happy" ending -- the elderly couple were rescued -- the water in their home was up to their chests. They did not have a lot of time to be saved; they were rescued only through happenstance -- when the crew heard someone cry out.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/27/us/texas-cnn-crew-helps-harvey-rescue/index.html
Until the storm hit the forecast for Houston was 20 inches. I was watching this very very closely. Some forecasters were saying up to 50 inches but as far as I could tell, and my daughter in Houston, they never intimated that Houston would get 50 inches. Houston got 20 inches in a single event last year and also the year before. There was localized flooding. They were expecting the same.