The River

As Rita makes her inexorable journey toward the Texas coast, a number of members of my Houston-based family are fleeing. They’re headed North, to the homes of other family members, some of whom are still close enough to have laid in supplies — water, gasoline (for the generator), charcoal, etc. — just in case the power is out for an extended period.

I’ve just learned my brother and his wife have arrived at my Dad’s with their newborn baby boy (born just a couple of weeks after Callum), two young girls, and my sister-in-law’s mother. They left last night and it took more than 6 hours to make a trip that usually takes 2. I’m a little worried about my Dad, who needs electricity to run his oxygen machinery. They’ve got a generator, thankfully, and are out getting gasoline (and more back-up oxygen) as I type. I hope supplies are readily available.

I got a text message from my aunt earlier, saying they were on the road. When I last spoke to her, last night, she and my uncle were prepared to hunker down and ride it out. I don’t know what changed between then and this morning, but I must say I’m relieved to know they are headed out. I’ve got a big family, though, and I don’t know what others have decided to do.

Growing up along the Gulf Coast in Houston, the threat of a hurricane always looms. (Don’t even get me started about the hurricane-related information drilled into us when I worked at KTRH Radio, where we expected to be the sole source of information when power went down and people depended on their radios.) People are now thinking back to Alicia in 1983, remembering where the flooding occurred and wondering what fate awaits the city over the next few days. Rita appears to be a wholly different animal than Alicia, though. People seem to be frightened in a way I haven’t seen before. Of course, much of the emotion is due to the aftermath of Katrina, but there’s also the fact that this is just a big storm. Very big.

UPDATE: The Rita blog at Chron.com talks traffic.

UPDATE2: My aunt and uncle ended up turning back, like many others, because of the horrendous traffic. Imagine driving in gridlocked traffic for hours (it took 6 hours to go away from the city and only 30 minutes for them to get back home) in temperatures in the upper 90s. People turned off their air conditioners not only to save precious fuel, but also to keep their cars from overheating. At one point, my aunt reports, it was 111 degrees inside their car. When the storm’s track appeared to be changing, and it was downgraded to a category 4, they gave up their attempts to escape and headed home.

UPDATE3: Rita has an RSS feed.