My Son's Take on Evacuating

texastrophies

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texastrophies

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This is the way my son passed time while we were trying to evacuate from Rita last week. It is kind of long, but pretty accurate.

My Diary on Dad’s Laptop

9-22-05 I have been sitting here for 3 and one half hours. I have gotten ten miles in that time. Right now my dad has the truck in park and not one car is moving on our entire side of the highway. The reason everybody is sitting here is because we are all evacuating, because of the hurricane Rita. We are finally moving for once, and my favorite song in the world is on the radio. Now we are stopped once again. I am to the point that I just want to turn around and go home. My legs are very hot because of this laptop. We are on the way to my grandmother’s house. I hope this traffic will start to speed up. Since we have gotten on Highway 90 the highest speed we have gotten is twenty-four miles per hour. They only play music every thirty minutes, and it is getting very annoying. I had to save and shut down because the computer was getting to hot. While I was off I drove up on a guy who was walking almost a mile in 102 degree weather. Then I saw a guy who was passed out on the side of the road. He was struggling to breathe. Right now we are stopped again and people are even sitting in the back of their trucks. I thought the guy that was walking had turned and was walking to his house or something, but he had turned around again and has passed us. (That shows you how slow the traffic is moving, if earlier in the story was not good enough for you.) But we do not have it as bad as other people do. The radio is telling people to use the highway we are on as an alternate. We started to pick up speed for about a sixteenth of a mile, but I blew that when I said finally, we are picking up speed. I guess that will wrap it up for right now. I might get back on and type a little more if I think of anything See ya. (For now, maybe.) It is now dark so I guess you could say that it is night time. I don’t consider it night yet because it is only about 8. We are just now crossing the city limits to Liberty. I hate the fact that it has taken so long. My dad just told me that he doubts that we will make it to my grandmother’s house on this trip so I guess that I will have to wait until either Thanksgiving or Christmas break to see them. I really want to see them though. This really stinks. I just saw a truck carrying bunch of mid-60’s cars and trucks. Now we are in a contra flow. The police have the road we want to go on closed. I can’t figure out why it is closed though. Again we started to be able to drive fast and we got caught up in traffic. It looks like this traffic is ten miles long. The lane to our left is going very fast though our lane is going low. My dad finally got into the other lane. I thought that he was not ever going to. Now this lane is backed up. I am going to see if I can find out what is going on. It looks like the cops are flagging people like construction workers. But they are doing it with flashlights. We are sitting here trying to get on the highway. It looks like it will be hard to do that though. We are finally on the highway, but we are right back into traffic. (Unfortunately) we are behind a truck that has its hazard lights on for some unknown reason. I am trying to keep my eyes open for somewhere to eat or buy some snacks. So I am going to save and shut down. Bye Bye

9-23-05 It is 7:38. We have been on the road for 19 hours and 9 minutes. We have not stopped to get something to eat, use the restroom, or get something to drink. When the traffic stops my dad gets us a dr. pepper. But we only have one left. I have called it, but I don’t think I will get it. Now we are on highway 190, and it is moving great. We are going in the direction of Woodville. There was a Shell station, and there were probably three hundred cars lined up down the side of the road. We are actually driving 54 miles per hour. As far as I can see there are 4 cars on the highway, and they are all driving fast. (Thank the LORD) we are now in Tyler county. I am starving so I hope we can find somewhere to eat that is open. We just let 2 more cars pass us. I will now save and go play games, but I will be back later for sure. I am back. I probably just had one of the worst moments of my life. We stopped to let my animals get out and walk around. I took my dog down the ditch to walk and use the restroom. Then all of a sudden my dad called me over there. He told me that my cat had gotten away from him. So I went in the woods to try to find her. I saw her and went after her. She kept running away from me. I knew I couldn’t keep up with her but I thought that I could outsmart her. I thought wrong. I was trying to get her, but she kept running away. My dad asked me where I was and he saw me. He told me not to go any further. I started to cry because I thought we wouldn’t get her back. My dad gave me the dog and went after the cat. He told me to stop crying. I was scaring her. So I stopped crying. He got her and gave her to me. I thought that was the end of that, but I was wrong. When we were going back to she stuck her claws in me, and jumped out of my arms. He went after her, and got in front of her. He said he had gotten around her. He said he had to jump on her to get her. He put her in the cage and told me all the stuff that he had to do to get her. He rested for a little bit, then got in the truck and we left. We are now in bad traffic again, and it is very bad. I am so tired of this stupid traffic. It is so boring. I want to go to the Dairy Queen, but my dad won’t go there. He wants to try to find another place down the road. I am so hungry and I want to get something to eat very badly. We were going to go to the Sonic but there wasn’t enough space. These last two days have definitely been the worst two days of my life. I wish we would have stayed at home and tried to ride it out even though it was my idea to evacuate. There are more people on the road right now than last night, but we are going 20 miles per hour. The reason we are going so much faster is because of the contra flow lanes. Everybody is going in the same direction. Now traffic is real bad again. Now my lane is staring to speed up and slow down. It keeps on doing this and it is getting very very annoying. Now all four lanes and the shoulder are completely stopped. I am going to read my book for a little while, but I will be back typing again soon. Hey, I am back. I just finished the book I was reading. It was a great book. When I was off I went to get something to eat. My dad asked me what I wanted to eat, because I had to stay with he animals. So I went over and looked on a pole and told him that I wanted the chili cheese crunch with a root beer. He came back with my drink. Later he came back with my food. He undid the steps on the trailer, and I sat down and took a bite out of it. I realized that it had mustard on it. So I ate as much as I could and threw it away. Then we loaded up the animals and started to drive off. Now we are in bad traffic again. It is 99 degrees, and I am sweating. I have now turned the air vents on in the backseat. We are in a town called Crockett now and we are going to find a place to sleep. So I have to save , shutdown get my pants and shoes on so I will be ready to get out when we get there. So Bye Bye.

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Re: My Son\'s Take on Evacuating

nice account of what you guys went though. It all happend so fast, I dont think I can recall a lot of the details now. all the days just merged into one big surreal dream-like experience.

I took a chance and waited until thursday night to cross Houston (from Clear Lake) . I was in the mandatory evac. zone 3 (same as you). I had a GPS, some friends on cell phone, and some back roads and I made it to katy in 90 minutes. I decided last minute to head west, once it looked like Port Arth was gonna get hit. but I dont have kids or anything, so I had a little more flexibility to take on more risk by waiting. Sorry to hear that you guys were on the road for so long.. but glad everyone came out okay.

I guess if I had to trade 20 hours on the road in exchange for my safety, I would, but I sure wish that the weathermen could predict it better. Not trying to place blame, its just the nature of the beast.

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