Should the Houston area have been evacuated for Harvey?

[wxeyeNH]

Looks like (at least for the short term)  the heaviest QPF might be moving off to the west of Houston.  On the other hand some  more convective elements are to the east and if the pivot is slightly more south then the metro has a tough time coming up....

Some thoughts of mine to ponder.  Perhaps waiting till the event ends to respond so we can keep this more about meteorology but just file these thoughts away......

 

 I agree with the Mayor.  He really answered it well last night.

1) How do you evacuate millions of people?  Remember Harvey was a Cat 1 one day before landfall which was going to be well, well south.  Models did show the stall and epic flooding.  Remember if that Saturday night band had setup a bit west or east the city would have been much better able to handle it.  They can handle rain like today but not the crazy convective training like the other night. That created the dire situation on Sunday morning....

2) Where do millions of people go?  Just drive north?   Look what happened last time they tried that.  Many more people died than have died in Harvey.

3)  Once they are gone when do you tell them to come back?  How long does it take to have the highway system cleared enough to bring back that amount of people?  When they come back and find there house waterlogged, where do they go?

Last thought is that why it looks just biblical on TV etc.  what percent of Metro Houston people actually have water in their homes?  Yes, thousands of homes but overall it must be a very low percent of the Metro area....

Don't respond to this as I don't want to get the thread too far off meteorlogy but just ponder my thoughts.  Plenty of time to discuss after the situation is over....

 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

6 minutes ago, sbos_wx said:

A lot of people don't have the financial means to evacuate... Another major, often ignored factor 

 Yeah, you kind of need a car to effectively evacuate, especially when public transportation is comprised, otherwise human emotion dictated staying home with your worldly possessions. 

[JoMo]

15 minutes ago, MattPetrulli said:

I believe they said everyone should shelter in place

Please, correct me if I'm wrong. 

I found this article a couple of days ago. It's a very fair article I think that links to the statements made by the various local/state/federal government.

http://heavy.com/news/2017/08/why-wasnt-houston-evacuated-mandatory-evacuation-issued-sylvester-turner-ed-emmett-abbott-trump-hurricane-harvey/

[PDIII]

3 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

Looks like (at least for the short term)  the heaviest QPF might be moving off to the west of Houston.  On the other hand some  more convective elements are to the east and if the pivot is slightly more south then the metro has a tough time coming up....

Some thoughts of mine to ponder.  Perhaps waiting till the event ends to respond so we can keep this more about meteorology but just file these thoughts away......

 

 I agree with the Mayor.  He really answered it well last night.

1) How do you evacuate millions of people?  Remember Harvey was a Cat 1 one day before landfall which was going to be well, well south.  Models did show the stall and epic flooding.  Remember if that Saturday night band had setup a bit west or east the city would have been much better able to handle it.  They can handle rain like today but not the crazy convective training like the other night. That created the dire situation on Sunday morning....

2) Where do millions of people go?  Just drive north?   Look what happened last time they tried that.  Many more people died than have died in Harvey.

3)  Once they are gone when do you tell them to come back?  How long does it take to have the highway system cleared enough to bring back that amount of people?  When they come back and find there house waterlogged, where do they go?

Last thought is that why it looks just biblical on TV etc.  what percent of Metro Houston people actually have water in their homes?  Yes, thousands of homes but overall it must be a very low percent of the Metro area....

Don't respond to this as I don't want to get the thread too far off meteorlogy but just ponder my thoughts.  Plenty of time to discuss after the situation is over....

 

Yes... I am sure you just walk a couple of miles and your are out of the water... there has to be plenty of higher ground.  

[Ralph Wiggum]

50 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

As an emergency manager, I'm totally embarrassed about the pathetic preparedness and response thus far from the county and state OEMs in Texas.  This is a more feckless "response" than Katrina.  

Seriously though, how do you "prepare" for something the likes of which no living being has ever experienced in recorded modern history? Not trying to pick a fight but those guys deserve some slack, no? You cant just up and tell the entire 1/6th of SE Texas to evacuate. I'm not sure what you would have done differently as a Monday AM quarterback. This is MUCH more widespread than NO/Katrina and more than anything we've experienced with more people affected.....millions more. 

[NJwx85]

1 minute ago, Ralph Wiggum said:

Seriously though, how do you "prepare" for something the likes of which no living being has ever experienced in recorded modern history? Not trying to pick a fight but those guys deserve some slack, no? You cant just up and tell the entire 1/6th of SE Texas to evacuate. I'm not sure what you would have done differently as a Monday AM quarterback. This is MUCH more widespread than NO/Katrina and more than anything we've experienced with more people affected.....millions more. 

Honestly we knew the flood potential at least 3 days in advance, and I'm sure they did too, and it was repeatedly downplayed.

[Ralph Wiggum]

52 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Many of the first responders have been telling reporters off camera that they wish there was a mandatory evacuation order given last week. I guess the authorities were afraid of what happened last time.

 

Yeah but Houston was never a guaranteed ground zero. "Jackpot" zone kept bouncing around though the general idea was there that "someone" in SE TX would get hammered and it would be widespread surrounding that zone. I dont think you can just tell millions and millions of people to flee 36-48 hours in advance. You know very well that it is near impossible to pinpoint exactly which areas will be nailed days in advance. C'mon, you know this better than me....I follow you in the NYC forum in winter. 

[Roy]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

As an emergency manager, I'm totally embarrassed about the pathetic preparedness and response thus far from the county and state OEMs in Texas.  This is a more feckless "response" than Katrina.  

Oh please. What should they have done, evacuate all of Houston? 

[Upper Level LOL]

Short answer: no. Long answer: lmao hell no

[Sophisticated Skeptic]

11 minutes ago, Roy said:

Oh please. What should they have done, evacuate all of Houston? 

 

I think he made the right decision to not evacuate.  you can't evacuate 3 million people for a whole week.  where are they all gonna go?

plus, it was low confidence at the time...that exactly the Houston area would get hit so hard like they did.   Yea, the models forecasted it and all.. but they were also all over the place, and never accurate with convective bands. 

[BxEngine]

Ppl please do proper research before posting objective stats. False stuff will be deleted.

[psv88]

Need to wait to see how many people end up dying. If its thousands, then it should have been evacuated. If its 100 or less, then not evacuating was the right call. 

[Stebo]

It is tough to say what should have been done, hindsight will always be 20/20. Issue to me is where do you evacuate to, San Antonio? Austin? Dallas? 2 of those 3 experienced heavy rain and flooding as well. Plus people are looking at this from a Houston only standpoint, the entire metro is almost 7 million people. It would be nearly impossible to evacuate in time because you'd need at least 2-3 days to get people out and 3 days before Harvey hit, no one expected the amount of rain to come nor the strength of the system. I understand the idea behind it but it is hard to actually execute an evacuation when looking at the circumstances in place. 

[BTRWx]

Many of them did evacuate...to Houston!  I'd never want to evacuate from one coastline to another!  Houston is still too close to the Gulf imo.

[canderson]

It is impossible to evacuate a city the size of Houston. It's the 4th biggest city in the country

Harris County is 1700+ square miles with a population of 6.5 million people. How do you evacuate 6.5 million people? You need weeks. You have to have somewhere fir them to go, gas stations ready, tow trucks ready, emergency vehicles ready, all towns en route emptied. 

That doesn't account for the 20% or whatever in hospitals, bad health, no vehicle, no home, mentally unstable, etc  

Before Rita's landfall, tens of thousands evacuated. The traffic jams lasted for days. 100+ people died.

So far iirc 7 have died, all because they were in car. 

It sucks but shelter in place was the right move. 

[msp]

20 minutes ago, canderson said:

It is impossible to evacuate a city the size of Houston. It's the 4th biggest city in the country

Harris County is 1700+ square miles with a population of 6.5 million people. How do you evacuate 6.5 million people? You need weeks. You have to have somewhere fir them to go, gas stations ready, tow trucks ready, emergency vehicles ready, all towns en route emptied. 

That doesn't account for the 20% or whatever in hospitals, bad health, no vehicle, no home, mentally unstable, etc  

Before Rita's landfall, tens of thousands evacuated. The traffic jams lasted for days. 100+ people died.

So far iirc 7 have died, all because they were in car. 

It sucks but shelter in place was the right move. 

also, KHOU stated yesterday that the only people that died in Allison did so in their cars.  everyone who stayed home survived. i'm sure that knowledge combined with the massive loss of life during the rita evacuations played strongly into this decision

[Sophisticated Skeptic]

the current situation reminds me of Katrina in this manner :

the first few days afterwards, everybody was all 'peace and love'...helping others and all.  

but then as they realize the power isn't coming back, their houses will be condemned from flooding...and everything will be f'd up for a long duration, they start going criminal..breaking into houses, stores, etc.  

give it a few more days, i'm guessin.

[seethruya]

8 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

As an emergency manager, I'm totally embarrassed about the pathetic preparedness and response thus far from the county and state OEMs in Texas.  This is a more feckless "response" than Katrina.  

Simple answer, more people would have died if mandatory evacuation orders were given than if they were not given. You really need to research the Hurricane Rita evacuation catastrophe. A 3 hour drive to Austin, 3 hour drive to San Antonio, 4 hour drive to Dallas, took a large percentage of people 24 hours to reach. Many, many, people never made it to their destination and were stranded all over the place from running out of gas (gas stations ran out of gas), vehicles overheated from hours of bumper to bumper traffic in the Texas summer heat, accidents, and many other reasons. More people died from the evacuation than the storm itself.

What the city learned is it's not possible to successfully evacuate the Houston Metroplex (7+ million people) in less than 48 hours. You'll end up loosing more life from the evacuation than the natural disaster.

The overwhelming majority of Houstonians are in favor of not evacuating because we all saw that it doesn't work on short notice. Small towns such as Rockport (population 10,000) or even smaller cities like Corpus Christi (population 300,000) can successfully evacuate on short notice, but Houston is just too large for it to be successful on short notice.

 

[Mikeymac5306]

12 hours ago, NJwx85 said:

Honestly we knew the flood potential at least 3 days in advance, and I'm sure they did too, and it was repeatedly downplayed.

The problem with that IMO is that you look at al the hype the weather stations do with storms, and some do not verify at times and everyone is out calling them a bust. If this storm stayed south, and Houston did a mass evacuation, there would be heads rolling at FEMA, at the state, and local scale.

Again IMO, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[sauss06]

I've come to realize a mass evac would be impossible, so I've changed my position on that, but what i won't change my position on is the mixed messages between the mayor and the governor. You EMA guys know what i mean. You need one message/directive, everyone saying the same damn thing.  If too many are given it creates confusion and i heard several people last night saying just that. They knew this storm was hitting, i'm not sure as to when they opened up their emergency operation center, but it doesn't sound like it was soon enough or the messages would have been clearer. I watched the Mayor speak the other night and thought dear god turn the mic off or give it to the PIO.

[Master of Disaster]

This is going to be a little lengthy so stick with me. Ever since Katrina, the emergency management community has changed. The priorities changed from managing emergencies, disasters and the responses to them into managing expectations. Expectations that are many times just not realistic. The city of Houston has a population of 2.3 million. The commuting statistical area has a population of 6.3 million. There is no possible way to evacuate 2.3 million people in a week. Its not realistic either. It takes 4 days to activate the national bus contract through FEMA. Then you have to argue WHY you would evacuate 2.3 million people. The entire city it not under water. You could possibly argue at this point if 90% of the population being affected are experiencing a "life threatening emergency" or is it more of a "threatening inconvenience". There is a huge difference there. The biggest difference is that one involves you losing your life if you are not rescued. The other reflects you simply being inconvenienced if you are not rescued. So priorities have to be made in rescues. If your basement is flooding, that does not an emergency make. If it is rising, that could be an emergency. So the question if the entire population should have been evacuated is nonsense. It's just simply not possible within a week to do so. So managing expectations is what the emergency management community does now. This was a two phase disaster. The first part was landfall and that had to take priority with all decisions. The second part with flooding had to be addressed based on actual threat. Flooding changes. Its predictable with streams, rivers, creeks but in metro areas, a single clogged storm drain can dramatically change the flooding threat for a single neighborhood. I don't think anyone can expect a response that is perfect to those variables. Then there is the personal accountability questions as well. At the end of the day, it is your responsibility to plan. prepare and protect your life and your family from disasters. The government can and will help. But assuming that responsibility lies with others is yet another unrealistic expectation. 

The lets discuss the "voluntary" and "mandatory" evacuation issues. The only thing that changes between the two evacuations are the words. Nothing else changes. The government cannot enforce an evacuation unless it's a public health emergency. The only real reason "mandatory" evacuations are used is because it's a liability statement from the government. "I told you to leave" I have no responsibility because you failed to do so. Other than that, arguing if it should have been mandatory or voluntary is simply an argument of urgency. Does one relay a more dire threat than the other?

[seethruya]

1 hour ago, sauss06 said:

I watched the Mayor speak the other night and thought dear god turn the mic off or give it to the PIO.

What did you not like with what he said? Was his southern drawl too strong for your liking? I thought he was very clear with why evacuation orders were not given.

Just for the record, I voted for governor Abbott and I completely disagree with his earlier statement on evacuating, essentially trying to override the mayor of Houston. Let's say Houstonians took the lead from governor Abbott and there was a mass exodus out of Houston, imagine all the people who would have been either stranded or stuck in traffic west of Houston (Columbus, La Grange, Bastrop) and north of Houston (Conroe, Luffkin), all locations that received over 25 inches of rain and flooded as well. It would have been a nightmare.

 

[msp]

21 minutes ago, seethruya said:

What did you not like with what he said? Was his southern drawl too strong for your liking? I thought he was very clear with why evacuation orders were not given.

Just for the record, I voted for governor Abbott and I completely disagree with his earlier statement on evacuating, essentially trying to override the mayor of Houston. Let's say Houstonians took the lead from governor Abbott and there was a mass exodus out of Houston, imagine all the people who would have been either stranded or stuck in traffic west of Houston (Columbus, La Grange, Bastrop) and north of Houston (Conroe, Luffkin), all locations that received over 25 inches of rain and flooded as well. It would have been a nightmare.

 

I too voted for Abbott and I voted against Turner. I agree Turner was right here. No metro-wide evac should have been called.  But I'd like to see a system put in place in the future to delineate areas of the metro most at risk for flooding from heavy rainfall and develop an evacuation plan for them, much like the one we have now for storm surge.  

[gymengineer]

General Honore suggested a preemptive evacuation of areas that have flooded in the past from heavy rains, not the whole city. He was actually quite adamant that the mayor made the wrong decision with no evacuations at all. I think Turner comes off as far too defensive at this stage, especially because he has no idea what the final death toll will be. 

[sauss06]

20 minutes ago, seethruya said:

What did you not like with what he said? Was his southern drawl too strong for your liking? I thought he was very clear with why evacuation orders were not given.

Just for the record, I voted for governor Abbott and I completely disagree with his earlier statement on evacuating, essentially trying to override the mayor of Houston. Let's say Houstonians took the lead from governor Abbott and there was a mass exodus out of Houston, imagine all the people who would have been either stranded or stuck in traffic west of Houston (Columbus, La Grange, Bastrop) and north of Houston (Conroe, Luffkin), all locations that received over 25 inches of rain and flooded as well. It would have been a nightmare.

 

i have many relatives from the south, so i understand "southern" very well. The day i'm talking about was Friday or Saturday and it had nothing to do with the directive not to evac.! 

Sometimes these politicians shouldn't speak. 

 

[LithiaWx]

On 8/28/2017 at 5:32 PM, sbos_wx said:

The Gov highly encouraged that all people who could possibly evacuate to try and do so. I mean, there was warning. This is catastrophic. There was NO WHERE to put millions in that time period. Impossible mission.

The second guessing should cease. Lets track the storm.

When you evacuate a huge city the well to dos with means get out.  The poorest of the poor have no means to leave and are stuck to suffer. The evacuation of Houston would have not been done fast enough to get folks off the roads before the rains started. 

[dan11295]

My thoughts on this.

First, the forecast models never had a 50" bullseye on Houston prior to the initial landfall, through they clearly indicated a significant flood threat. That bullseye was closer to the landfall point based on a track of Harvey going due south after stalling inland. Models were for 15-20" in general for the Houston area. Second, evacs priors to landfall based on potential freshwater flooding generally aren't done. That said, evacuating those that had flooded during recent events certainly would have been prudent. Evacuating the entire city wasn't practical nor was it really warranted based on modeling for the Houston area.

Also, any death toll estimates are just wild speculation right now. Flash flooding events from TC's in the US in the modern era rarely result in more than 100 fatalities. I don't think Katrina is that relevant here as IMHO that was a unique situation in NO where people were below sea level and basically trapped in a bowl filling with water. There were also ~250 storm surge fatalities in MS includes in the total for Katrina.

[Eskimo Joe]

IMO, Harvey represents a catastrophic failure of the local and state emergency management systems for the following reasons.  It's clear that we have not learned much from Katrina and Sandy:

1. Mitigation: 
   • Since 1940, the Houston area has been building ad hoc on 100 year floodplains and adding hundreds of square miles of impervious surfaces which increases flash flooding.
   • Too many sub divisions are being built close to or directly downstream from levees and dams.  As in the case of Addicks and Baker reservoirs, this causes thousands of homes to be inundated during major flooding.
2. Preparedness:
   • Before the event, local and state officials failed to act in an appropriate manner.  Ordering mandatory evacuations for the City of Houston itself is not a feasible option.  Houston is the 4th largest city in the country and a mass evacuation cannot be done safely.  There is not enough shelter capacity, businesses will not allow their employees to leave, not everyone can self evacuate.  BUT, the cities should have anticipated special or functional needs or folks that live in flood prone areas by opening some large capacity shelters.  
   • Speaking of shelters, perhaps the biggest failure of this emergency will be shelter operations.  Good shelter operations need to be anticipated and spun up about 24 - 36 hours before an event.  Watching these shelters being opened ad hoc is a set up for disaster.  Shelter locations are actually pre-identified and have to meet certain criteria (ADA access, number of bathrooms, kitchens for mass feeding, generator or the capacity to have a generator hook up via quick connects) yet there was almost none of this done before the event.  As a result you see people flocking to places like mattress stores and bowling alleys for shelter.  These are not locations that are capable of mass care or feeding and in some cases the shelters themselves are flooding out:  
       
3. Response:
   • Numerical models pegged this event for days and the NWS had a consistent message.  In anticipation of this event, Texas and Louisiana should have recognized the magnitude of the event and started requesting national support via EMAC (Emergency Management Assistance Compact), yet here we are on August 30th and only USAR assets have been requested.  This event will need everything:  transportation, communications, fire fighting, mass care, mass feeding, public health, public information, emergency operations center staff, volunteer/donations management, public works, hazardous materials response, mass fatality management, logistics support, air and refueling support.  Asking for folks like the Cajun Navy is great, but having them flood the area with vigilante actions endangers the volunteers because they are unfamiliar with the terrain.  Also, by not pairing up these folks with local first responders it complicates search and rescue.  People are dialing 911 and then getting plucked with out following up that "I am rescued and here is where I am going, I no longer need county or parish services."  Then we see USAR staff have to do double the work to find people.  People forget that when you call 911 we are morally and legally obligated to follow up with the call for service even if it's 6, 12, 18 hours later.
   • The local OEMs need to keep the media out of shelters.  The shelter operations are a complete clusterf*ck and this is how you get interviews like the CNN one yesterday where people are yelling at the media to leave them alone.  That's inexcusable on the part of local officials.
4. Recovery:
   • Economic recovery will take a decade or more.  This will be the most costly natural disaster in the history of this country.  If the recovery is as hap hazard as everything else described above, then we're setting the same areas up for another Harvey or Allison.  I hope at my core that we will learn from this and fix the mitigation problems of the past, but I'm not expecting much.  

[The Iceman]

I don't think the entire city should have been evacuated but it was clear this was going to be a significant rain maker even 3 days out and before Harvey strengthened. Yeah, the models were showing only 15-20" but that should have been enough to say that flood prone areas and areas that were flooded in the tax day floods should be given evacuation orders. This would have cut back on the rescues immensely while at the same time would not have shut down the city as 4 million people try to flee. I get that the storm didn't give a ton of lead time for evacuations as the rain threat really came into focus about 3-4 days out but that was more than enough time to get people in flood prone areas to get out or be given clear cut instructions of where to shelter or what to do in the case the flooding verifies. I don't know why the mayor thought the only two options were give orders evacuate the entire city or evacuate none when a clear middle ground was feasible. With the forecast lead time, people that live near areas prone to flooding or even in a hundred year flood plain should definitely have been evacuated as it was looking pretty certain this was going to be a major flooding event with at least 15-20" of rain likely and the possibility for more. To sit and do nothing in preparation was absolutely the wrong decision and the mayor imo has come across as a blowhard trying to defend his actions by saying it was not feasible to evacuate 4 million people over a flood threat. I mean no **** dude, evacuating 4 million people a day before the storm would have been dumb,  but it was certainly feasible to set up shelters in advance and give at minimum voluntary evacuation orders to areas that are prone to flooding or that flooded in the tax day floods. In an age with all of this information available I don't get why some people think this was the best anyone could do in preparation of this event.

[The Iceman]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

IMO, Harvey represents a catastrophic failure of the local and state emergency management systems for the following reasons.  It's clear that we have not learned much from Katrina and Sandy:

1. Mitigation: 
   • Since 1940, the Houston area has been building ad hoc on 100 year floodplains and adding hundreds of square miles of impervious surfaces which increases flash flooding.
   • Too many sub divisions are being built close to or directly downstream from levees and dams.  As in the case of Addicks and Baker reservoirs, this causes thousands of homes to be inundated during major flooding.
2. Preparedness:
   • Before the event, local and state officials failed to act in an appropriate manner.  Ordering mandatory evacuations for the City of Houston itself is not a feasible option.  Houston is the 4th largest city in the country and a mass evacuation cannot be done safely.  There is not enough shelter capacity, businesses will not allow their employees to leave, not everyone can self evacuate.  BUT, the cities should have anticipated special or functional needs or folks that live in flood prone areas by opening some large capacity shelters.  
   • Speaking of shelters, perhaps the biggest failure of this emergency will be shelter operations.  Good shelter operations need to be anticipated and spun up about 24 - 36 hours before an event.  Watching these shelters being opened ad hoc is a set up for disaster.  Shelter locations are actually pre-identified and have to meet certain criteria (ADA access, number of bathrooms, kitchens for mass feeding, generator or the capacity to have a generator hook up via quick connects) yet there was almost none of this done before the event.  As a result you see people flocking to places like mattress stores and bowling alleys for shelter.  These are not locations that are capable of mass care or feeding and in some cases the shelters themselves are flooding out:  
       
3. Response:
   • Numerical models pegged this event for days and the NWS had a consistent message.  In anticipation of this event, Texas and Louisiana should have recognized the magnitude of the event and started requesting national support via EMAC (Emergency Management Assistance Compact), yet here we are on August 30th and only USAR assets have been requested.  This event will need everything:  transportation, communications, fire fighting, mass care, mass feeding, public health, public information, emergency operations center staff, volunteer/donations management, public works, hazardous materials response, mass fatality management, logistics support, air and refueling support.  Asking for folks like the Cajun Navy is great, but having them flood the area with vigilante actions endangers the volunteers because they are unfamiliar with the terrain.  Also, by not pairing up these folks with local first responders it complicates search and rescue.  People are dialing 911 and then getting plucked with out following up that "I am rescued and here is where I am going, I no longer need county or parish services."  Then we see USAR staff have to do double the work to find people.  People forget that when you call 911 we are morally and legally obligated to follow up with the call for service even if it's 6, 12, 18 hours later.
   • The local OEMs need to keep the media out of shelters.  The shelter operations are a complete clusterf*ck and this is how you get interviews like the CNN one yesterday where people are yelling at the media to leave them alone.  That's inexcusable on the part of local officials.
4. Recovery:
   • Economic recovery will take a decade or more.  This will be the most costly natural disaster in the history of this country.  If the recovery is as hap hazard as everything else described above, then we're setting the same areas up for another Harvey or Allison.  I hope at my core that we will learn from this and fix the mitigation problems of the past, but I'm not expecting much.  

 

great post, this is a great summary of everything that went wrong. I agree that it is frightening how little we have learned and progressed from Katrina but with how many people that are defending the mayors actions or lack there of on this I really don't think we will learn or fix this either. Considering how bad this event was, it could have even been worse and the city got pretty lucky in several ways from it being an absolute worst case scenario.