Good read: Nightmare scenario for south Texas coast

[Portastorm]

Here is an interesting read from today's McAllen, Texas newspaper about the troublesome evacuation from Padre Island. Unfortunately, south Texas is long overdue for a big hurricane hit.

Michael

--------------



Checkpoint could bottleneck storm evacuation
November 16, 2005
Elizabeth Pierson
The Monitor


Experts predict Falfurrias traffic jam in event of hurricane

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — It would take two and a half days for all Cameron County residents to evacuate the Valley if a hurricane threatens a direct hit, emergency experts said Tuesday.

And thousands of Valley residents would have no way to evacuate at all if ordered to do so, Rio Grande Valley officials told Gov. Rick Perry’s Task Force on Evacuation and Transportation Logistics.

Some suggested the Valley could see problems on the scale of those seen in the days-long evacuation of Houston earlier this year before Hurricane Rita.

Motorists were stranded without gasoline or services, and that incident prompted Perry to create the task force on city evacuations.

If everyone in Cameron County is ordered to leave, they would be funneled west on Expressway 83 to Pharr, then north on U.S. Highway 281 toward San Antonio, the state-designated shelter for Valley residents. U.S. Highway 77 is too close to the coast and is not a designated hurricane evacuation route.

Texas Department of Transportation officials estimate 113,000 vehicles would leave the county in a mandatory evacuation, said Lynn Underdown, chief of the Rio Grande Valley Sector of Border Patrol.

But the Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias can open only five lanes heading north, which could handle about 25,000 cars in a 24-hour period, she said.

"We could probably push it to 30,000 or 35,000 (per five lanes, per day), but we would not be able to exceed that and maintain national security standards," Underdown said.

If they contra-flow all southbound lanes to create 10 northbound lanes, they would process about 50,000 cars in 24 hours, she said. The number of cars evacuating through Falfurrias could be fewer if some people evacuate to Laredo rather than San Antonio, for instance.

Those numbers could be higher if people from Matamoros cross the bridges to evacuate to San Antonio, something no official discussed in the meeting.

"That’s a big issue and it adds to the number that you’re facing," Cameron County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa said afterward.

TxDOT officials who knew how those numbers were reached were not immediately available.

When Houston was evacuated, families left town in caravans, bringing along all their cars, trucks and boats. If that happened in the Valley, far more than 113,000 vehicles would have to go through the checkpoint.

Many residents may not make it to the checkpoint because they cannot afford the trip to San Antonio, have poor health or don’t have cars, said Brownsville Mayor Eddie Treviño Jr.

Hinojosa’s office estimates there are 30,000 people who could not leave on their own because health, financial or transportation limitations. Every bus in Brownsville could carry just 7,000 of them to safety, Treviño said.

Treviño and Hinojosa both asked for the state to designate evacuation shelters in Hidalgo County and other areas closer to the Valley but safely away from the coast.

The meeting was the third in a series of six around the state for the task force to determine how the state can better evacuate major cities. The 14-member commission includes Carlos Cascos, former Cameron County commissioner and a member of the Texas Public Safety Commission.