Amid the concern about the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, there is a question lingering in the minds of many residents along the Texas Gulf Coast. What would have happened if the storm had hit here?
“We want people to ponder that question,” said Eliot Jennings, the county’s emergency management director.
Those whose job it is to respond to such disasters hope they have an answer, but they also hope to learn more in the coming months.
“We’ll be putting together a task force to travel to Biloxi and Gulfport to see what lessons they might have taken from what happened,” Jennings said.
They’ll wait a little while before making the trip.
“We want to give them an opportunity to get on their feet before we come knocking on the door,” Jennings said.
Already, local emergency management officials believe they are better prepared for a Category 5 storm than were their counterparts in Louisiana and Mississippi.
New Orleans officials ordered a mandatory evacuation Sunday morning. If the same storm had been headed for Galveston, local officials insist they’d have issued that order no later than the night before.
The National Weather Service believes it will know within 30 miles of where a storm will hit 72 hours before it comes ashore. At that point, those who would be in a position to call an evacuation in Galveston County will be getting together to discuss their strategy. They’ll remain in regular contact, and by 48 hours out, they expect to have a pretty good idea of what they plan to do.
Studies indicate that it will take 28 hours to evacuate Galveston County. Local emergency managers have a plan they hope will get the job done with several hours to spare.
“We’ve got the science of the studies that tell us how long it will take to evacuate,” Jennings said. “We’ve got the science of the weather that tells us what we can expect from the storm. The last element is the residents and whether they will play their part.”
To some extent, the storm re-enforced what the folks planning Galveston County’s disaster response already knew: No one in the county should plan on riding out a storm of the magnitude of Katrina. The only sane plan is to evacuate, they say, and the time to plan that evacuation is now.
Anyone who doubts that, they say, need only ask those who lived through the storm in Louisiana or Mississippi. Ask those who spent days trapped in their homes without food.
“If you look at the shelters that had to be evacuated, it certainly re-emphasizes why we don’t plan to open shelters in the risk area,” Jennings said.
People who fail to follow that advice, the planners say, simply complicate the recovery process.
“There is going to be a time,” Jennings said, “when as much as police and rescue personnel want to get to you, they just won’t be able to do it.”
During Hurricane Katrina, he said, that period extended for roughly 10 hours.
For those familiar with Galveston history, the stories coming out of Mississippi and Louisiana have an eerie ring of familiarity.
The man describing his wife’s hand slipping from his grasp as her body was washed away. The woman telling of her aging aunt who could not make the climb to the attic and thus perished in the raging water below.
“We’ve seen those scenes before,” said Steve Allen, the science and operations officer at the National Weather Service office in Dickinson. “This is the magnitude of the storm that hit Galveston in 1900.”
At the peak of such a storm, nearly all of Galveston County would be under water.
“If you were still on the island then, you’d need to be on the second floor of a building,” Allen said.
The top of the seawall would be below at least 3 feet of water. The Texas City levee would be overrun. Flooding would extend all the way to Friendswood.
“You’d not only have the storm surge coming in, you’d also have the rain to contend with,” said Gene Hafele, warning and coordination meteorologist for weather service. “It might be 24-26 hours before those floodwaters began to recede.”
Is the county ready for such a disaster? Jennings believes it is.
“I am completely convinced that if somebody leaves home when we tell them to leave that they’ll be out of danger before the storm hits,” Jennings said. “Instead of 3-4 hours to get to Huntsville, it might take them 6, but they will get there.”
Jennings and others charged with disaster preparedness know that last week’s storm at least for now has captured the attention of Gulf Coast residents. They want to take advantage of the opportunity by staging a town meeting in Galveston this month.
“We want to let people know what they can expect,” he said, “as well as what we expect out of them.”
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Emergency managers are still trying to plan for the people who won’t be able to evacuate on their own. They plan to put those people on buses and take them to shelters away from the wrath of the storm.
In the days since Hurricane Katrina, they say, more people have begun to register for help. To add your name or the name of a friend or loved one to the list, call 2-1-1. Operators are available around the clock.
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What: Hurricane town meeting.
When: 6 p.m. Sept. 14.
Where: Island Community Center, 4700 Broadway, Galveston.
Galveston County Evacuation Routes
Studies indicate that it will take 28 hours to evacuate Galveston County. Local emergency managers have a plan they hope will get the job done with several hours to spare. Credit: Galveston County Emergency Management
