Rita evacuation turns into traffic nightmare - Yahoo! News
Rita evacuation turns into traffic nightmare - Yahoo! News: "Texas officials called for evacuation of the Houston area, including the city of Galveston, on Wednesday as Rita, now a Category 4 storm with 150 mile per hour (241.4-kph) winds, took aim from the Gulf of Mexico.
In the exodus that ensued, cars moved so slowly on Interstate 45, the main road to Dallas 240 miles north, that people had time to get out of their cars, walk to nearby stores, wait in long lines at restrooms and return to vehicles that had not moved.
Evacuee Peggy Hill told a local television station she had been on the road 20 hours, departing from League City 10 miles
southeast of Houston and had not yet gotten across the nation's fourth largest city.
'I was finally able to get from Beltway 8 to Highway 290, so now we're on the 290 parking lot instead of the Beltway 8 parking lot,' she said.
John Griffin, 37, Houston, his wife and two young daughters turned back to Houston after several hours on the road trying to move away from the coast.
'It's an absolute nightmare,' he said. 'I'm worried about the storm, but you have to pick your poison -- stay and deal with wind and rain here or get out on the road and deal with what are already catastrophic conditions on the highway. I've never seen anything like this.'"
In the exodus that ensued, cars moved so slowly on Interstate 45, the main road to Dallas 240 miles north, that people had time to get out of their cars, walk to nearby stores, wait in long lines at restrooms and return to vehicles that had not moved.
Evacuee Peggy Hill told a local television station she had been on the road 20 hours, departing from League City 10 miles
southeast of Houston and had not yet gotten across the nation's fourth largest city.
'I was finally able to get from Beltway 8 to Highway 290, so now we're on the 290 parking lot instead of the Beltway 8 parking lot,' she said.
John Griffin, 37, Houston, his wife and two young daughters turned back to Houston after several hours on the road trying to move away from the coast.
'It's an absolute nightmare,' he said. 'I'm worried about the storm, but you have to pick your poison -- stay and deal with wind and rain here or get out on the road and deal with what are already catastrophic conditions on the highway. I've never seen anything like this.'"
posted by Blackgold at 9:26 PM
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