Hurricane Harvey: The potential to change US history?

Rumors city of Houston knew the potential devastation Harvey would cause Houston but purposely underestimated it in the media to calm panic

Also, just saw a model that has it exiting to the Gulf at Victoria, skirting the coast all the way east to NOLA, coming on shore there and then heading west again to Houston. 🚫

a reply to: kosmicjack

Yeah, that one got me too.

a reply to: Redrova

Come on. The NWS were saying it would be a Catastrophic rain event since Thursday. But what the hell!?

A) People don't listen
B) People think modern tech and convenience can shield them from the effects of nature
C) Most U.S. citizens don't have even $400 bucks for an emergency.

Exactly what is the city supposed to do? Declare Martial law and bus people to camps? CTers would bitch about that too.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
It's foolhardy to concentrate so much of our infrastructure and industry in the path of periodic hurricanes, but in any one place like we have Houston. Strategic thinking was not on the minds of the people who allowed this concentration to happen.

This is why the destructive COST of hurricanes (river flooding, wildfires, landslides, etc) is increasing. It's not because hurricanes are getting stronger, or that rivers rise higher, or that there are more wildfires and landslides. No -- it's because more people have decided to live in the places that these things have historically occurred.

Fewer people lived along the Florida (or even Texas) coast in the past. People along the Mississippi river in the past didn't build real close to the river like they do now. People in California used to stay away from building homes in landslide or wildfire prone areas. The hurricanes still those places in the past, and the flood waters, landslides, and wildfires still happened in the past, but fewer people were affected by them.

a reply to: kosmicjack

Point C is a big one.

Moreover, we're talking about 5 million people in the region. How does that even get done in a month?

a reply to: kosmicjack

90% of people don't pay attention to nws/noaa. They catch the drive by media headlines and move on. Once we get through this hopefully it will be a wake up call to my fellow Houstonians.

a reply to: Redrova
And, let's get real, even Friday night CNN was wall to wall Trump.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: TXTriker
This is about 40 miles north of Houston in Brenham.

www.facebook.com...

For those who are into college football, that would be the Blinn college that feeds a lot of football talent into the NCAA ranks when they say "near Blinn" I am guessing. Am I correct? That's the town and place the school is located around? One of our all-time best QBs, Michael Bishop played his junior college years at Blinn.

You are correct.

originally posted by: kosmicjack
a reply to: Redrova

Come on. The NWS were saying it would be a Catastrophic rain event since Thursday. But what the hell!?

A) People don't listen
B) People think modern tech and convenience can shield them from the effects of nature
C) Most U.S. citizens don't have even $400 bucks for an emergency.

Exactly what is the city supposed to do? Declare Martial law and bus people to camps? CTers would bitch about that too.

You are quite right about there being clear warning of the probability of this being a catastrophic storm. The Weather channel and the mainstream news services were saying rainfall amounts Wednesday and Thursday that were memorable because they left me dumbfounded. I didn't know that 30+ inches of rain could fall on a place so quickly, but they were in fact forecasting that.

I'm not sure how anyone could say this was being downplayed or underestimated. They seem to have estimated it pretty much exactly on target, based on the forecast and flooding estimates they were saying a day or two before the storm hit.


And yeah -- there are still people who never seem to listen. There was a woman on the news today who said she barely escaped the flood with her life because the waters rose so fast as she slept.

I mean, all of the news networks and the Weather Channel were calling for unprecedented flood waters in the area, and this woman decided to go to sleep without watching the rising water, and was "surprised" by it? Really? smh.

originally posted by: Redrova
Rumors city of Houston knew the potential devastation Harvey would cause Houston but purposely underestimated it in the media to calm panic

If you had been watching our local media you would understand how laughable that is. It has been so hyped its unreal. The only soothing in the media has been the press conferences during the storm when everyone watching knew how bad it was.

This crap is ridiculous.

originally posted by: Redrova
Rumors city of Houston knew the potential devastation Harvey would cause Houston but purposely underestimated it in the media to calm panic

What would have been the challenges of evacuating country's 4th largest city? The Houston TV/Radio stations were predicting 20+ inches of rain, the day before Harvey came ashore. But..where would you send/take the 5.5 million people who live in the Houston metro area..and house/feed them for at least a week?

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: Redrova
Rumors city of Houston knew the potential devastation Harvey would cause Houston but purposely underestimated it in the media to calm panic

What would have been the challenges of evacuating country's 4th largest city? The Houston TV/Radio stations were predicting 20+ inches of rain, the day before Harvey came ashore. But..where would you send/take the 5.5 million people who live in the Houston metro area..and house/feed them for at least a week?

Go back and look at the evacuation during Rita. That was a whole lot worse and is the reason a lot of people didn't leave this time. You cannot move that many people that quickly. They would have had to evacuate the entire city.

We went through this in Allison as well but it was mostly just the east side of Houston not the entire city plus all of the suburbs.

I work in the area of the Galleria. It is 35 miles to work one way and we are in the middle of this storm as well as the city. This thing is yuuuuge!

originally posted by: Redrova
a reply to: kosmicjack

90% of people don't pay attention to nws/noaa. They catch the drive by media headlines and move on. Once we get through this hopefully it will be a wake up call to my fellow Houstonians.

I wouldn't count on it waking anyone up. Memories are short and our storms are about once every ten years. Lots of time to forget and lots of new people move in during that time.

We just had an employee transfer from Chicago. She started last Monday during the eclipse and by Friday she is smack dab in the middle of a hurricane. Bless her heart.

originally posted by: kosmicjack
a reply to: Redrova
And, let's get real, even Friday night CNN was wall to wall Trump.

I remember commenting here on ATS, as Harvey was coming ashore, that CNN was saying that the Joe Arpaio pardon was the "big story of the day". CNN idiots (particularly Don Lemon brain) were actually upset that Hurricane Harvey was attempting to usurp the Arpaio pardon.

a reply to: TXTriker

Ya. If they were going to have a mandatory evacuation, they would have had to start last weekend. And exactly 0 peeps would have left.

My cousin was stuck on the interstate for 26 hours with Rita.

a reply to: carewemust

*crickets*

originally posted by: TXTriker

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: Redrova
Rumors city of Houston knew the potential devastation Harvey would cause Houston but purposely underestimated it in the media to calm panic

What would have been the challenges of evacuating country's 4th largest city? The Houston TV/Radio stations were predicting 20+ inches of rain, the day before Harvey came ashore. But..where would you send/take the 5.5 million people who live in the Houston metro area..and house/feed them for at least a week?

Go back and look at the evacuation during Rita. That was a whole lot worse and is the reason a lot of people didn't leave this time. You cannot move that many people that quickly. They would have had to evacuate the entire city.

We went through this in Allison as well but it was mostly just the east side of Houston not the entire city plus all of the suburbs.

I work in the area of the Galleria. It is 35 miles to work one way and we are in the middle of this storm as well as the city. This thing is yuuuuge!

Right. That saying "Everything is BIG in Texas", was bad in this instance. There were not adequate words that any forecaster, news-station, or government official could use to adequately describe what the flooding would be like, for millions upon millions of people in Texas, and now SW Louisiana.

Also, the media hypes everything beyond belief these days. Their credibility is crap. Would have been best for the Governor of Texas to do a live broadcast, augmented by 3-D computer simulations of how bad it would be. But then, we're back to what can be done in advance to evacuate 5.5 million people?

I didn't know that 30+ inches of rain could fall on a place so quickly, but they were in fact forecasting that.

It happened with Tropical Storm Allison -2001 or so. 30+ inches but it trained on only one part of the city. Houston is very spread out so you can have heavy flooding in some areas and not others. In Allison I lived on the SW side and only had water about curb height. The east side looked like what the city looks like now.

a reply to: TXTriker


So what's the next big threat, after another 20 inches of rain in a warm/humid environment like S.E. Texas? Disease from sewage? Alligators and snakes? Skin eating bacteria in the water? No food? No water?


What percentage of the Houston Metro area is still there?