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RITA: Houston Returning To Normal.

Houston is very much still in flux. We're not going to be back to normal for a few more days, but we're rapidly getting there. We were almost out of gasoline, so it was a relief to get gas near downtown a couple of hours ago. It was a Chevron near the intersection of Louisiana and Hadley in midtown Houston. They only had premium, but that was fine.

We noticed restaurants opening up all over the place. And grocery stores are also opening. We ate brunch buffet at Pappadeaux seafood restaurant on Richmond. They never lost power, so we had a nice brunch there, although it was somewhat abbreviated due to lack of shipments coming in this past few days. Still, it was nice to have hot muffins, fresh salad, fruit salad, rice, crawfish etouffee, cold peel-and-eat shrimp, seafood gumbo, grilled snapper, veggies, and all sorts of other good Cajun-style stuff. And there was a shorter wait than there usually would be.

Getting back to normal, but it may be a few more days before we'll be able to pull up to any gas station, guaranteed, and get plenty of gas. It may be a few more days before every grocery store will have every normal item, every time.

At least the local channels have ended their 24/7 coverage. They needed to have done so Saturday at about 11 in the morning. Yesterday's college football experience was certainly lacking.

Packing, unpacking, battening down our hatches (including moving all of our furniture and other items away from windows), evacuating, then not evacuating, then packing up again, and unpacking, then packing, then unpacking, then un-battening down our hatches... well, it's been laborious. We're tired. We're glad we dodged the bullet. But it may be a day or two more before I am back in regular blogging mode.

Katrina raised awareness and made people freak out and evacuate; Rita will neutralize that the next time around. It is hard to imagine so many people evacuating next time around.

As far as public policy responses/changes, I have nothing but good things to say about everyone who helped facilitate the evacuation. One long-term project in the works is the Trans-Texas Corridor. It'll have rail. It'll have ridiculous numbers of lanes, with separate lanes for cars and large trucks. All this on top of the current infrastructure.

Otherwise, there's not much else that you can do to prevent a hurricane. Or even mitigate the damage from one. You can build flood walls and levees. You can build buildings stronger. And you can help evacuate everyone you can. You can predict that hurricane cone with marginally greater certainty. But you can't stop the forces of nature. And people need to remember that, re: the ongoing Katrina recriminations.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 September 2005 02:31 PM

Comments

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at September 25, 2005 07:12 PM

Posted by: Will Franklin at September 25, 2005 07:14 PM

Posted by: WunderKraut at September 25, 2005 07:21 PM