Left the 06 997S at home in Clear Lake area and packed up family in wife's LX470 (LandCruiser). We needed 4WD and ground clearance as we did alot of offroading between Northbound and Southbound I45 in the contraflow section; avoiding major slows even in this section. That whole experience was surreal. The best word to describe it is utter pandemonium. 4 hour wait for gasoline in Madisonville, TX. 2 hours sleep total in 72 hours. I have never been more exhausted in my life, even including medical school and residency experiences. Good to be back home with healthy family, and blessed to have avoided a direct hit. My 43 ft pride and joy (sailboat) was also spared this time! I can't imagine how horrific it would of been if I was driving separate from my family.

 

A good friend of mine left clear lake and arrived in College Station 36 hours later with a two h
our nap in Huntsville. He had about 10 extra gallons of gas for each of his vehicles and arrived at his destination on empty.

We tried to get on I-10 at Katy Mills, but the road looked like something from a "B" end-of-the-world movie and we promptly turned around to face our fate at a friends house near the Kirkwood and I-10 Porsche dealership.

In the past two weeks I have seen a red 993 Turbo S that lives in our neighborhood. I saw the same car leaving on a flatbead truck on Wednesday morning, presumably evacuating from the storm.

BTW, we almost escaped on a charter jet from the Sugarland Airport, but at the last minute the airport closed, we could have left from Duke airport, but it was too close to the coast to risk the trip. $6,700 one way for eight of us and one dog to get to Dallas sounded like a pretty good deal when they were reporting 175MPH winds and a direct hit on Galveston.

I highly recommend Mike at Tailwind International, he spent a couple of hours finding a plane for us and finding airport options etc.

 

It was mass hyteria that did Houston in. All the media really hyped Rita like the second coming of Katrina, of course Houston isn't below sea level or on the coast. Why where you guys evacuating? Unless you were on the coast and under mandatory evacuation, you shouldn't have been on the freeway. I blame the media for what happened.

Anyway, its not like Houston is going to be like New Orleans with a levee break and flooding that just won't go away. Even after Allison, the flood waters went down after a few hours.

 

Even though we are many miles inland we live on the edge of the flood plane for a 22.5 foot storm surge. I stayed during Alicia in '83 and that was a cat. three, windows blew in, doors blew in, trees fell on houses and power was not fully restored for over a month. With 175 MPH winds I don’t think our house would have remained standing.

Even if it had, with a 14month old I really didn't want to have to rely on FEMA for anything or be without A/C for weeks. Today is expected to get near 100 degrees with high humidity we wanted nothing to do with that.

I agree however that the media hyped evacuation for everyone, even folks as far out as 50 miles from the coast wanted to leave, but mainly to avoid the inconvenience and potential danger of being without electricity gas and food for who knows how long.

Also the contra flow lanes should have been opened immediately, with bulldozers or bombs or whatever. The slowness on opening those lanes was criminal.

 

Hey if you're in the low lying area's, yes by all means evacuate, but people were evacuating from the Woodlands and Even Spring and Tomball! I don't really think they need to evacuate from those areas. I also lived through Alicia and in Fort Bend, there was little damage. Power was out only a day, if I remember correctly, hey that was back in the mid 80's!

 

media hype is out of control ... The news is so going for rating these days . If there is a day when there is not much news these guys sweat big time and soon as there is somthing bad to report again it is like they are relieved and have a gig again ... Reminds me of the song " Dirty Laundry "

 

cytoboy-

you have pm.

-J

 

Glad to hear that you all made it back safely!

 

Glad to hear yall are safe and sound...Time for you guys to move to San Diego!

 

Hurry and make sure you all get to Southern California in time for the "Big One."

 

Katrina was underkill...Rita was overkill. The media went beserk in anticipation of Rita and thereby caused a lot of unwarranted panic, mental and physical. I retired from government work. I saw beaurocracy and incompetence that amazed me. Most TV watchers during these two storms saw the same thing. Now there are government plans to spend over one hundred billion dollars to put four astronauts on the moon. With that kind of money in addition to be money we have and will spend in an unecessary war we could build dykes and functional water catch bains aroung the gulf area, and then some.

 

Hey I work for NASA... Ouch! But I understand that we spend a lot of tax money. I do my best to spend it wisely. If we (NASA) are voted out I understand completely that that is the taxpayers choice.

I work for the Federal Govt. the bureaucracy can be staggering and NASA is apparently one of the least wasteful and least leucocratic Federal organizations of all, imagine the others...

Porsche content... Still waiting for the GT3 and Turbo to come out to make my decision, my 944 project car weathered the "storm" with no damage.

The only problem is we got almost zero rain and my lawn is a mess LOL!

 

"It was mass hyteria that did Houston in. All the media really hyped Rita like the second coming of Katrina, of course Houston isn't below sea level or on the coast. Why where you guys evacuating? Unless you were on the coast and under mandatory evacuation, you shouldn't have been on the freeway. I blame the media for what happened."

Media? Like saying guns kill people... people kill people. It is the 98% rule. 98% of the world's population don't have sense enough to come in out of the rain.