Houston: After the Storm

October 15, 2008 by darrell.holmes
Filed under: Blog Entries, Community, Society & Culture

It’s been a month now since Hurricane Ike hit the Galveston coast and most things in life are back to normal. Traffic is back at only a ridiculous level versus only a week ago when it was unreasonable. There are still dozens of traffic lights that don’t work or work in varying degrees. Parts of Houston still don’t have power and/or gas. There are around 32 confirmed dead with a certainty of several dozen more to be found. Also, there’s around 2 BILLION dollars worth of damage with no infrastructure to speak of still in Galveston and parts of other Gulf-side communities. There were several things that came up during the storm that a lot of people outside of Houston don’t quite understand or weren’t aware of that I want to address.

1. Why didn’t more people evacuate?

There are a wide variety of reasons why some people didn’t evacuate that I want to address. The prevailing presumption among outsiders seems to be that Southerners are just stupid and don’t have the where-withal to sidestep a roundhouse kick when they see it coming. That’s not the case. My family and I left our home the day before the storm hit land and we weren’t in the predicted “damage swath”. Many people stayed because Mayor Bill White and Judge Ed Emmett were asking the people to “weather in place” if they could. The expectation as late as the Thursday prior to the storm was that winds would be strong but not life threatening. The threat was from the actual storm surge and I think we all heard the threat to Galveston County “Anyone who stays faces imminent death.” In fact, that was a pre-recorded message from the Weather Service that was automatically broadcast based on conditions. The Mayor was also asking people to stay to keep roadways from becoming jampacked even more for those who were required to evacuate. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated Houston during the threat of Hurricane Rita as overreaction was high from the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, but many of those people discovered the road conditions to be the real threat as gasoline became scarce and some died from heat exhaustion while sitting on the sides of roads during their evacuation. The goal of local government was to prevent widespread panic while ensuring those who were in the danger zone were able to get out of their areas of residence safely.

2. Why do so many people live there if it’s so hurricane prone?

In case you didn’t hear during Ike storm coverage, Houston, Texas is the 4th largest metropolitan area in the country and the largest city in the state of Texas. Houston is often ranked in the Top 5 metropolitan areas to live because of several factors including a high employment rate, an inexpensive cost of living, high value home pricing, and, ironically, it’s proximity to a major body of water. Though Houston is in an area that has a somewhat high probability for hurricanes compare that to other large cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Chicago that also deal with natural weather threats such as earthquakes, freeze-related incidents, and even severe tornadoes in some parts. The fact is that Houston offers a better quality of living than the majority of cities can offer.

3. Why did it take so long for so many people to get power back?

The major downside to living in Houston is that infrastructure change is very slow. Houston is a conservative city with a small town mentality that is many times adverse to change. Major expansion has been going on at every major artery into and out of the city for the last 5 or more years. The power infrastructure is currently undergoing change to keep such a massive amount of people from having to do without power for such a long period of time.

The fact is Houston is too large and important a city to allow a hurricane to sidetrack it for a long period time. Houston remains an economic island of stability during one of the most tumultuous times in the past 80 years of our country. Moving forward Harrjs County will need to secure an encompassing plan that can better protect the lives and property of its residents while simultaneously ensuring a quicker upstart once the next storm has passed.