Rita and Corpus Christi

[Sonia_TX]

I've lived here all of my life and I finally broke down and looked these places up on a map....

LaPorte is right on the water...

[MannyIsGod]

Well, I'm going to reinstall XP, so I'll be back in an hour or so.

[SpursWoman]

Thanks for bumping the *good* map...


Isn't the traffic better now to try getting out again?

[MannyIsGod]

Oh, and I think your friends in La Porte will be ok. There will be some storm surge, but it won't be nearly as bad as it could have been. They'll be fine.

[Kori Ellis]

Sonia - that sucks about your friend. Hopefully she can stay somewhere safe and high.

[MannyIsGod]

They need to STAY. You never leave this close to a hurricane coming ashore. You'er better off riding it out. But seriously, the sturge there won't be too bad. The winds certainly won't be too bad. They pretty much lucked out.

[Sonia_TX]

SW, it took a while for me to find it...lol. It was way back there on post 900 something...

I thought the traffic was better..I know it's better coming here but her mom didn't want to come here because 'it floods in San Antonio'. Isn't that the stupidest thing ever?! Yea it floods...but WE aren't in the middle of a damn hurricane.

[SpursWoman]

That's true....I forgot *touch down* moved up a few hours from what I'd been hearing the last few days...

[Sonia_TX]

Manny I hope you're right. You're smart when it comes to this stuff so I'll take your word for it.

[Sapphire]

SoniaTX--I will keep them in my prayers--my house is just north of Baytown and I got out Weds. Luckily my job allowed, and I had the funds to go. I came thisclose to waiting till after I got a good night's sleep and leaving Thursday. Thank God I didn't!

Anyway, hopefully they have water and food. Cell phones were HORRIBLE on Weds. I imagine they are worse than that now. Like I said, let's all pray hard. God is good, He really is.

[MannyIsGod]

Sonia..that is pretty damn stupid

Don't worry, Jess and I have had our fill with stupid mothers. The conversation between Jess and her mother over the past few days has awed me.

The worst part about it is the people who don't gethit but evacuate think they were dumb to do so. In truth, they just got lucky.

[Sonia_TX]

Oh and She is a poster here.. I *think* her name is Court4Short... She's from the Houston area but loves our Spurs.

[MannyIsGod]

Ok Ok, I'm going to do the reinstall now.

[Sonia_TX]

Sonia..that is pretty damn stupid

Don't worry, Jess and I have had our fill with stupid mothers. The conversation between Jess and her mother over the past few days has awed me.

The worst part about it is the people who don't gethit but evacuate think they were dumb to do so. In truth, they just got lucky.

yea...I guess with stuff like this you never know. Rita has been doing some crazy hasn't it? So who knows what it was going to do. My friends in Corpus left and are staying out of there until they're for sure it's over with.

[Sonia_TX]

SoniaTX--I will keep them in my prayers--my house is just north of Baytown and I got out Weds. Luckily my job allowed, and I had the funds to go. I came thisclose to waiting till after I got a good night's sleep and leaving Thursday. Thank God I didn't!

Anyway, hopefully they have water and food. Cell phones were HORRIBLE on Weds. I imagine they are worse than that now. Like I said, let's all pray hard. God is good, He really is.

Sapphire I am glad you're okay. I hope you have a house to go back to also. But as long as you're here (you are in SA right?) you might as well have some fun w/us.

[Vashner]

I wanted some rain

[Sapphire]

I wanted some rain

Head East, they are going to get plenty.

[Vashner]

Hum I was thinking about chugging a six pack of coors light tall boys and using a waterhose overhead for a few minutes outside...

[midgetonadonkey]

Hum I was thinking about chugging a six pack of coors light tall boys and using a waterhose overhead for a few minutes outside...

You should make it a six of Blue Bull talls. Nothing like malt liquor and a waterhose. Nothing at all.

[Horry For 3!]

La Porte must be very low elevation, ugh. She's gonna need a ton of luck.

I had friends from Beaumont leaving 2 PM Thurs, also through Lufkin, headed to McKinney. Took them 24 hours. many hours 10 MPH, or dead stopped. Lots of road rage and insane stuff.

==========================

September 23, 2005
Out of Gas, and Patience, on Texas Highways
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE WOODLANDS, Texas (AP) -- Some people were angry. Others were kind. All were stuck.

Out of gas and some of them out of patience, hundreds of folks woke up Friday morning, or never went to sleep, marooned on an interstate highway. They were trying to get out of traffic-choked Houston to flee approaching Hurricane Rita.

"I don't know what to do," said Nissanka Dharmawardene, who left Wednesdsay evening with his wife and two children from their home in Clear Lake, a flood-prone area in south Houston. Almost 36 hours later, they were on the grassy shoulder of Interstate 45, about 50 miles from home. Their gas-starved car was pointed northbound on the normally southbound lane, a result of officials who rerouted traffic Thursday in an unprecedented step to relieve horrific congestion.

Dozens of cars were like theirs, lining the shoulders of the highway or abandoned in parking lots in front of businesses.

Ironically, traffic by daylight was sparse, a far cry from the gridlock the night before as an estimated 2.5 million people fled inland from the Gulf of Mexico coast.

"Last night we were bewildered. Now we are hoping, waiting for trucks to come," said Dharmawardene, 52.

"I guess you sit and wait for someone to bring you gas or wait for the hurricane to come and kill us," said 32-year-old Darrell Dailey from southwest Houston. He was hoping to get to Dallas with his wife and three kids, a sister and her child.

Out of fuel, they spent the night at an Oak Ridge North school in Montgomery County with more than 200 other families.

"I'm scared," said his 12-year-old daughter, Tykendrea. "I think the hurricane will come, and we're outside."

Dailey slipped a credit card into a gas pump at a closed station. It approved the transaction but dispensed no fuel.

That's when Jim Carroll, 55, walked up.

"I've got some," he said, walking over to his own truck, disabled because of a fan belt problem, to retrieve a five-gallon can about half-filled with gasoline. Then using a cut plastic soft drink bottle as a funnel, he poured it in Dailey's car.

"Might as well let people use it," he said. "Let them get down the road."

"God bless you," Dailey told Carroll, who had hoped to get from his home in League City in Galveston County -- a likely flood area -- to Waco in Central Texas.

"We have been remarkably assisted by so many good citizens," Houston Mayor Bill White said of such random acts of kindness.

Dailey had spent the night in the gas station lot with about 50 people.

"It was hot, people were sleeping in cars, babies on the concrete were sleeping," Carroll said. "Not many people were prepared for this."

One S Oil Co. gas station with pumps that failed Thursday was able to get them running Friday morning, and constables armed with shotguns guarded the pumps and formed a single long line of cars to organize the chaos. Only premium-grade fuel was left. There were few objections. Karen Cheney said she had tried to soothe desperate motorists Thursday by giving away water.

"They attacked us," she said. "It was pretty hairy."

"We did lower the price to regular so we wouldn't gouge these people," Randy Pachar, the station owner, said Friday. "I'm just glad we were able to get this fixed. I wish we could do more."

Mary Coltzer, 68, was among several hundred who spent the night across the street in a parking lot, then was part of the long caravan of vehicles waiting Friday to get the unexpected fuel bonus. Overnight, people from a nearby neighborhood showed up to give them water.

"We'd have been in a world of hurt," she said, "Pretty damn miserable. It's not a lot of fun."

Rosa Castro, nearly out of fuel, walked to the front of the long line with a five-gallon plastic gas can, but officers said she'd have to be in her car, with her sister behind the wheel and their seven children in tow. They left Pasadena at 4 a.m., and stopped 17 hours later to spend the night in a Baptist church.

"It's been terrible, believe me," she said, wearing shorts, a T-shirt and house shoes. "We started with a full tank of gas and lots of water for the kids, but it was such a mess. I wondered why so many people in Katrina didn't move in time, and now I'm in the same situation. All I have is cash, clothes, and God."

I used to live near The Woodlands, I lived in Conroe. My grandparents were going to go to Austin but it took them 3 hours to get to Montgomery which usually takes 10 mins, so they said forget this and turned around and is going to ride it out.

[Vashner]

The wind totally stopped outside here now... sigh..

[SpursWoman]

I noticed that, too....


But it sure is beating the out of Geraldo right now.

[Tres_Till_it_MHz]

[Tres_Till_it_MHz]

^^^^Guess no one has seen her before.^^^ She's in CC before you get to the Island.......

[MannyIsGod]

Theres some pretty big fires in Galveston right now. I don't know how you stop a fire with winds that bad...