Evacuation Solution #1...Gas

[MWatkins]

Gas has turned out to be a huge problem for residents evacuating from both Rita and Katrina. Many of the cars stranded on the interstates were stranded due to lack of gas. Time and time again, stations ran out of gas leaving costal residents with no options.

Worse, many of the gas stations were likely evacuated as well...

To me, this is one of the single biggest problems facing evacuation traffic in densely populated cities. Howe do you get gas in the cars so people can get away?

Solution #1 seems to be the deployment of emergency tankers at GAS stations before the evacuations begin. Rather than try to send an ill-equipped truck up the interstate to fill up cars...get gas preposotioned along evac routes. If station managers are unwilling to stay open...you have another issue...and perhaps a governmental emergency order could be somehow conjured up to allow the national guard to staff these stations.

In any event...and I have no formal trainig on the logistics of getting gas to gas stations...I would think we could come up with a way to get this fuel in position ahead of time so residents don't race around wasting valuable time looking for a gas station that still has gas.

MW[/i]

[gatorcane]

Gas has turned out to be a huge problem for residents evacuating from both Rita and Katrina. Many of the cars stranded on the interstates were stranded due to lack of gas. Time and time again, stations ran out of gas leaving costal residents with no options.

Worse, many of the gas stations were likely evacuated as well...

To me, this is one of the single biggest problems facing evacuation traffic in densely populated cities. Howe do you get gas in the cars so people can get away?

Solution #1 seems to be the deployment of emergency tankers at GAS stations before the evacuations begin. Rather than try to send an ill-equipped truck up the interstate to fill up cars...get gas preposotioned along evac routes. If station managers are unwilling to stay open...you have another issue...and perhaps a governmental emergency order could be somehow conjured up to allow the national guard to staff these stations.

In any event...and I have no formal trainig on the logistics of getting gas to gas stations...I would think we could come up with a way to get this fuel in position ahead of time so residents don't race around wasting valuable time looking for a gas station that still has gas.

MW[/i]

Mike good thoughts but was it really a huge problem? While the current gas situation makes evacuating a more lengthy procedure, in reality, everybody was able to evacuate, avoid the storm and not get injured due to lack of gas. Furthermore, the scale of evacuations from Rita and Katrina happen very rarely and a more typical evacuation scenario would not be so grandiose. Finally the NHC gives several days of guidance and warning now before actual landfall which in my opinion, if the warnings are heeded as intended, is enough time to get sufficient gas and evacuate.

[MWatkins]

Gas has turned out to be a huge problem for residents evacuating from both Rita and Katrina. Many of the cars stranded on the interstates were stranded due to lack of gas. Time and time again, stations ran out of gas leaving costal residents with no options.

Worse, many of the gas stations were likely evacuated as well...

To me, this is one of the single biggest problems facing evacuation traffic in densely populated cities. Howe do you get gas in the cars so people can get away?

Solution #1 seems to be the deployment of emergency tankers at GAS stations before the evacuations begin. Rather than try to send an ill-equipped truck up the interstate to fill up cars...get gas preposotioned along evac routes. If station managers are unwilling to stay open...you have another issue...and perhaps a governmental emergency order could be somehow conjured up to allow the national guard to staff these stations.

In any event...and I have no formal trainig on the logistics of getting gas to gas stations...I would think we could come up with a way to get this fuel in position ahead of time so residents don't race around wasting valuable time looking for a gas station that still has gas.

MW[/i]

Mike good thoughts but was it really a huge problem? While the current gas situation makes evacuating a more lengthy procedure, in reality, everybody was able to evacuate, avoid the storm and not get injured due to lack of gas. Furthermore, the scale of evacuations from Rita and Katrina happen very rarely and a more typical evacuation scenario would not be so grandiose. Finally the NHC gives several days of guidance and warning now before actual landfall which in my opinion, if the warnings are heeded as intended, is enough time to get sufficient gas and evacuate.

I believe there many accounts of residents who did not evacuate due to the gridlock on the interstates...and a significant portion of that gridlock was related to cars running out of gas in the middle of the road. Heck...1 stalled car can back up traffic for miles on a normal day. Imagine the impact of multiple vehicles stalled in contraflow evacuation traffic.

Just because...this time...the hurricane did not pass over Houston where many of these types of situations occured doesn't mean the system works. The evacuation of Houston...as it was with New Orleans...was a miserable failure. And when the bureaucrats finsh the study...a significant portion of this failure will almost assuredly be associated to fuel shortages and stalled cars on the interstate.

MW

[THead]

I think its because too many people left at once, that causes the problem. People would normally have enough gas with one tank full to get to their evac points. Maybe there needs to be a staged evacuation, where certain areas leave at one time, and other areas leave at another several hours later. Or maybe everyone that their last name begins with A-F leaves between this time period, etc. Of course that would require alot of cooperation, and might require addition lead time as far as the evac notice. I'm sure someone can find a way to make it better.

[HurricaneQueen]

Excellent post, Mike. I have wondered the very same thing. It seems so logical and is a problem with every evacuation-not just Houston. Any time a storm is threatening the local gas stations run out of gas just as the groceries run out of bread and milk. Because it presented such a large problem in Rita and received so much press hopefully it will be addressed in future evacuations. I believe we have all learned a lot about logistics, humanity and storms in the last month.

Lynn

[timNms]

Mike, I agree with you. There needs to be a plan in which gas can be made available to those who are evacuating. A tank of gas will only last so long when one is stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end.
Something else that needs to be addressed is there needs to be gas available to those people (like me) who live well inland, but suffer from the storm. We had no access to gasoline for 4 days after Katrina. The main reason was because there was no electricity to pump the gas. Those who were fortunate enough to have a generator faced the problem of getting gas to keep it going. There were a couple of rural stations that ran their pumps on generator power, but the lines were so long and the tanks at their stores so small, that people waiting toward the middle to end of the lines got left out.
There are other considerations that need to be made for rural communities also. For example, my uncle who died the Wednesday after katrina was a hospice patient. The local office SHOULD have provided their patients with generators, or at least, battery operated nebulizers so that when the power failed (and they had warning that it would happen by local news media), their patients would have some means of taking breathing treatments or be able to run their oxygen machines, etc. I'm sure there were other medical needs that were not met. My mother, who is also on hospice, did not see her nurse until 9 days after the storm!
Hopefully, lessons will have been learned from both Rita and Katrina and some positive changes will be made.

[THead]

Mike, I agree with you. There needs to be a plan in which gas can be made available to those who are evacuating. A tank of gas will only last so long when one is stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end.

But if people left in stages, it should be enough to get you 200-300 miles, assuming there would be less traffic.

Sorry to hear about your uncle. Yes, the gas/power problems afterwards are another whole issue.

[timNms]

Mike, I agree with you. There needs to be a plan in which gas can be made available to those who are evacuating. A tank of gas will only last so long when one is stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end.

But if people left in stages, it should be enough to get you 200-300 miles, assuming there would be less traffic.

Sorry to hear about your uncle. Yes, the gas/power problems afterwards are another whole issue.

Leaving in stages would work theoretically, but what about those who don't follow the orders.
Didn't Houston (or maybe it was Galveston) order evacuations in stages? Or am I mistaken?

[THead]

Mike, I agree with you. There needs to be a plan in which gas can be made available to those who are evacuating. A tank of gas will only last so long when one is stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end.

But if people left in stages, it should be enough to get you 200-300 miles, assuming there would be less traffic.

Sorry to hear about your uncle. Yes, the gas/power problems afterwards are another whole issue.

Leaving in stages would work theoretically, but what about those who don't follow the orders.
Didn't Houston (or maybe it was Galveston) order evacuations in stages? Or am I mistaken?

Yeah, that was my caveat in the previous post I made, would require alot of cooperation from the public, and probably more lead time.

[FunkMasterB]

I think gas was only a problem because people were stuck in traffic for 15-20 hours. Many ran out of gas simply because they had to run their engines for so long and couldn't go to where gas was.

What do you think the average gas mileage was for those evacuating? Probably under 10 mpg!

I think if you solve the traffic flow problem, you solve much (but not all) of the gas problem.

Lucky for Houston residents, this was just a dress rehearsal.

[Windy]

Well, I think it might be a good idea to add one more item to your hurricane stockpile: 5 or 10 cannisters of gasoline to put in your car trunk.

Normally, carrying gasoline in your trunk is frowned upon (the vapors can explode), but I think that in the case of a hurricane, it's a good idea. Most hurricane chasers bring 10 (or more) extra gallons of gas with them on chases.

[SWFLMom]

Gas was a BIG problem in FL last year. Many people trying to flee the hurricanes got stuck on the side of the road. If a major hurricane is threatening the FL peninsula. some of us have to drive 500-600 miles to get out of the state. We can't do that on one tank of gas, even if traffic is flowing.

[timNms]

This is definitely something that needs to be addressed by those who plan evacuations. It would be wonderful if they could work out staged evacuations. But that would require an earlier start. With landfall projection errors beings as they are, and some people (like me) wanting to get out as fast as possible, it will be difficult to make this type of plan work.
I still think planned gas-up areas are a good idea, just in case

[THead]

Gas was a BIG problem in FL last year. Many people trying to flee the hurricanes got stuck on the side of the road. If a major hurricane is threatening the FL peninsula. some of us have to drive 500-600 miles to get out of the state. We can't do that on one tank of gas, even if traffic is flowing.

Good point, getting out from S. Fla is a totally different story.

[MGC]

Does Texas have contra-flow like La/Ms does? From what I saw on TV it looked like they don't. Word of advise, leave early......MGC

[FunkMasterB]

Does Texas have contra-flow like La/Ms does?

They didn't execute the contra-flow quickly enough. They were at least 36 hours late on it, and it was only in response to the gridlock that was occurring at the time. I imagine that's the first thing they're going to work on.

[jopatura]

Gas was a major problem here, even in Bryan/College Station which is a good 90 miles from Houston. Anyone in the area couldn't go anywhere just because noone had gas and noone had food.

The one thing that went wrong was that people panicked and people panicked good. Even people here in B/CS were evacuating, even though this was a major staging area for many people coming from the Houston/Galveston region.

One thing our local anchors were calling for was that the government and FEMA should designate certain gas stations along the major evacuation routes to stay open and to have gas at all times. I think this hurricane season is really going to set a precedent on how the country looks at natural disasters. Unfortunately, if Rita had hit next month, I don't think people would have been as stir-crazy, but being only three weeks off of Katrina and because the media had still been showing pictures of Katrina around the clock, I think it sent many many sane people off the deep end.

With that said, I do think the system saved lives. It just needs to be slightly reworked for it to save lives while being effective. And as much as I think Mayor Bill White is the best mayor this city has seen in a long time, he needs to get off his high horse just slightly; Houston does not appear to have "the best evacuation plan in the country."

[Eye10TX]

Since when was the evacuation of Houston a "miserable failure"? It was the largest evacuation to ever take place (well over 2 million people) and every single person was successfully out of the range of the storm many hours before climate conditions began to deteriorate, and far from the would-be affected areas, if Rita had followed the projected path.

Very few people left as early as they could have, which caused the clogging and gas problems. Why not just schedule a visit to someone in another city or state, or to relatives you want to see, or even to a vacation spot for a few days?

This was actually the very first time I had ever heard my friends or neighbors say they were staying because they were afraid of possible looting -- and some wouldn't even board up for the same reason! They thought if they boarded up, people would know they were gone! That's just crazy--but it was because of the NOLA coverage.

Another outcome in the aftermath is that many people won't be able to go to work and our Metro bus system won't be running for several days--the rail system not at all for several more days--because of the shortage of gas.

[mommasue]

TimNms wrote:
There are other considerations that need to be made for rural communities also. For example, my uncle who died the Wednesday after katrina was a hospice patient. The local office SHOULD have provided their patients with generators, or at least, battery operated nebulizers so that when the power failed (and they had warning that it would happen by local news media), their patients would have some means of taking breathing treatments or be able to run their oxygen machines, etc. I'm sure there were other medical needs that were not met. My mother, who is also on hospice, did not see her nurse until 9 days after the storm!

It is not the responsibility of Hospice to provide generators for their patients. We supplied our patients on the gulf coast with several tanks of oxygen and the battery operated nebulizers and two weeks supply of medicine and medical supplies needed. I am sorry that your uncle passed and that your mother did not see her nurse for 9 days post Katrina. However, my office is based in Biloxi and our nurses were seeing patients On Tuesday August 30. We see our patients after disasters according to the needs of the patient. (the worst first) and accessibility. My nurses, many of whom lost everything, busted butt to check on their patients. Perhaps your hospice needs to revamp their disaster plan.

[timNms]

TimNms wrote:
There are other considerations that need to be made for rural communities also. For example, my uncle who died the Wednesday after katrina was a hospice patient. The local office SHOULD have provided their patients with generators, or at least, battery operated nebulizers so that when the power failed (and they had warning that it would happen by local news media), their patients would have some means of taking breathing treatments or be able to run their oxygen machines, etc. I'm sure there were other medical needs that were not met. My mother, who is also on hospice, did not see her nurse until 9 days after the storm!

It is not the responsibility of Hospice to provide generators for their patients. We supplied our patients on the gulf coast with several tanks of oxygen and the battery operated nebulizers and two weeks supply of medicine and medical supplies needed. I am sorry that your uncle passed and that your mother did not see her nurse for 9 days post Katrina. However, my office is based in Biloxi and our nurses were seeing patients On Tuesday August 30. We see our patients after disasters according to the needs of the patient. (the worst first) and accessibility. My nurses, many of whom lost everything, busted butt to check on their patients. Perhaps your hospice needs to revamp their disaster plan.

My hat is off to your nurses. It appears that they went beyond the call of duty!