Now that Hurricane Harvey is departing the area many will wonder what could have been done to make the devastation less severe. In times of crisis blame is easy. Blame feels good – it’s an emotional outlet. Blame also is a defense mechanism as old as The Fall in Genesis – it casts responsibility on others. But just like in Genesis blame doesn’t solve problems or resolve issues.
What’s important is learning lessons from the disaster so that when the next crisis arises the preparation is better and impact lessened. To that end, criticism of the mayor for not ordering an evacuation needs to stop. Whether an evacuation was or was not ordered would not have impacted the flooding. Blaming the mayor for not calling an evacuation is not productive. He made the right call. We were never in danger from wind or storm surge. That’s what you evacuate to escape.
Not evacuating also had benefits that aren’t readily visible for the news so don’t get reported, but do have a significant impact on reducing human suffering. The media doesn’t see the 2:00 AM property walks that discover debris filled drains and gutters that are cleared to restore drainage and in the process saves vehicles and homes from sheet flooding. Homeowners who stayed battled sheet flooding intrusions and were able to keep flooding below the power outlets significantly reducing the amount of repairs needed. None of those stories gets picked up, and the picture presented is incomplete and one sided.
There will be a time to demand accountability going forward. Now is not that time. When that time comes it’s important to focus on the future and what lessons we should learn from the disaster.
The propaganda machine is hard at work trying to make the mayor look good so we never learn from the failed policies parker and Turner.
1) This mayor won’t spend a penny on protecting vulnerable neighborhoods from flooding by building detention basins. Everything goes to pet projects. Nothing goes to critical infrastructure.
2) target areas needed to be evacuated. The poor people in greenspoint who live in a flood way needed to be taken out on metro busses no later than Tuesday. Meyerland needed to be given voluntary evac reccomendations on Tuesday also. This is common sense and could have saved a lot of pain.
By not forcefully refuting these failed policies, you allow the propaganda machine to drive the narrative. If that happens, the problems don’t get solved and this city falls.
Grow a pair and fight. Resist.
In order to hold someone accountable you first need to have credibility so observing third parties agree the questions need to be answered rather than simply dismiss the questions as whining (justified or not.) To that end, we need to give Mayor Turner credit when he makes the right call.
We live in an age where it’s difficult to get good weather information from bad. With most of the media being ratings driven rather than trying to have a calming effect, sensational Facebook types of so called weather experts giving doom and gloom forecasts for clicks, and social media in general allowing for the spread of rumor it’s tough for someone without the proper background to figure out what’s really going on. The mayor had to make a judgment call with dubious information. If he had called for an evacuation
1) It would have been short fuse since the storm rapidly strengthened and the idea that it may strengthen so much was only apparent roughly 24 hours before landfall
2) The public likely would have heeded the evacuation order late, since the strengthening took place 24 hours before landfall
3) It would have been a mass evacuation leaving a Rita type of mess since it couldn’t be phased and
4) The needed evacuation areas wouldn’t be easily evacuated because of the jammed roads.
We would be looking at a much worse mess had an evacuation been called. The decision, and storm rescue efforts have been excellent. The mayor deserves significant credit.
The propaganda machine is easy enough to get around in this case. Just frame the argument in the light of what can we do better next time. That’s where the focus needs to be. That focus is also easy enough to bring to bear. Should the mayor’s office not want to learn lessons and communicate those lessons then freedom of information requests can be made to force the office to show where the rainy day funds were spent. Should they not want to talk about what will be done to reduce flooding in the future it can be brought up as an issue tied to the upcoming pension vote – if we can’t trust the City with rainy day funds why should we trust the city with a billion dollars to shore up the pension fund. Lots of room to maneuver if needed. However, we can try to first dialogue and work together to mitigate the damage when, not if, future events occur.
Rita was the storm that made me stop listening to the media (didnt rain a drop). My brother and I spent the next day taking gas to the poor souls that tried to leave and ran out of gas, mostly large vehicles with families stranded on I-10 and 290. I will never evecaute, I will die with my wife and pets and hope we make it to a better place when this jig is up.
1. “This mayor won’t spend a penny. . . ” Yes. And the Mayor before him; and the Mayor before; and the Mayor before, ad infinitum. And, don’t forget a long line of willing and docile city councils. This problem has a long history, and you can’t simply lay it at the mayors feet. Further, even if he had started spending vast sums of money, the day he was inaugurated, those projects would be in process and wouldn’t have helped a bit.
2. “Targeted areas needed to be evacuated. . . . Tuesday.” If you mean Tuesday August 22, at that point in time Harvey wasn’t even a Tropical Depression, down around the Yucatan. Why would you start evacuating then? If you mean Tuesday August 29, given that Houston was already flooded how would you accomplish such a thing?
I really wish people would stop trying to discuss evacuation as if it could have been a solution. The only possible way to evacuate Houston would be to declare martial law and shoot anyone who doesn’t follow orders. Even at that it would take 3 – 4 days to empty the city. We had maybe 24 hours. I remember Rita. It took me 20 hours to get to Lufkin.
If you weren’t here for Rita, then the word “evacuation’ should never cross your lips (or exit your computer).
Sylvester Turner was right. You cannot evacuate six million people.
As for me in Clear Lake, I will never again evacuate, a 20-foot storm surge notwithstanding. I evacuated for Ike. I would rather die drowning at home than die stuck in my car in another fucking evacuation catastrophe.
I hope everyone is OK. I left Houston some years back and just saw that our old home is under water…
The media makes me sick, All they do is attempt to play the blame game when there is nothing you can do nor predict what mother nature has in store for us.
And there is no way to evacuate 6 to 7 million people.
Y’all can have our metro sexual mayor here in Austin …We’d trade him out in a snap, however something tells me the California implants love him.
It sickens me to see people trying to use any unfortunate event for political purposes regardless of which side of the spectrum they are on.
You got that right podner!