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September 22, 2005

Rita: Evacuation Route Crisis!

Official calls highway gridlock a “death trap”

 

 

Hundreds of thousands are currently stranded on Interstates 45, 10, and highway 59, and other Houston- and Galveston-area evacuation routes as cars are literally backed up for miles and many have run out of gas.

 

KHOU, a Houston television station is reporting also that many others are idling very low on fuel in the bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from Houston to just south of Dallas. Many of these cars have only a quarter of a tank or less, meaning their occupants will be stranded shortly as well.

 

Worse yet, many fuel stations are now completely out of gas as well. While KHOU is reporting state officials are looking into bringing in additional tankers to refill the gas stations, obviously those tankers would encounter the same gridlock the other vehicles have encountered.

 

Add to that the construction zones along I-45, narrowing lanes and forcing detours and you get what a Texas Highway Department official told KHOU was a “death trap.”

 

The only good news presently is that the hurricane has been downgraded to a cat-4 and has shifted to the east – and that shift may continue with the high pressure area to the north continuing to shift to the east (though this is certainly bad news for New Orleans with the amount of rain they may wind up receiving after all).

 

Posted by Martin at September 22, 2005 03:58 PM

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