Almost Gone Now

Hurricane Rita is on the last hours of her visit to our area now. We dodged the bullet and we are grateful. Houston has endured tropical storm winds and some rain all night and this will continue until around lunch time, we are told. We had some small branches in the yard when daylight broke this morning and that was about all. Still have power, though it did flicker off and on several times for a few minutes each time during the night. In Houston, power going out is not an unusual event even during normal heavy thunderstorms.

Our elected leadership pulled together like champs and brought the population through this tense time. As the nation saw during Houston's excellent handling of evacuees from Katrina, Mayor Bill White and County Judge Bob Eckels worked as equal partners and most things went as planned. The mayor is a democrat and the judge is a republican and it is so refreshing to watch them in action. They are truly an excellent team.

Problems arose with the initial evacuation of traffic through the city. This city pulled off the largest ever evacuation in American history. The number of people runs in the range of 2.5 million leaving the area. Remember, Houston is the 4th largest city in the country. All the the area's coastal communities were under mandatory evacuation. Many low lying areas were also under mandatory evacuation in the sourounding counties. Harris county, which is Houston, was never under mandatory evacuation. Problems arose when such a large number of people in Harris county voluntarily left while mandatory evacuations were ongoing. With memories of Hurricane Katrina so fresh in everyone's minds it is not surprising. Gas was depleted from service stations and traffic crawled on the freeways on the way out of town. But, under local leadership's guidance, the city, county, and state worked together to get people who were stranded off the interstate system before the storm moved through. Shelters sprung up and helped people in route to other destinatons. As usual, volunteers stepped up and helped their fellow Americans.

Decisions are being made now about managing traffic situations for people coming back into the area as the storm leaves. Decisions will be made about school meeting Monday and businesses opening back up. My son is hoping for an even longer weekend off from school! They have been out since Thursday and businesses have been encouraged by the mayor to only have those absolutely necessary come in to work. My husband was paid for Thursday and Friday even though his company followed the advice and told employees to not come in.

So I am waiting for the wind to stop and for everything to settle back down to normal. My thoughts are with those in coastal Louisiana and for those in my former home Lafayette, LA. I pray everyone can stay strong and calm.

This, too, shall pass.