"Pro-active" Perry !

Perry issues executive order on hurricane evacuations
Contraflow plans to be developed
By Liz Austin
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order Tuesday requiring state officials to develop more detailed hurricane evacuation plans, including a plan for opening major highways to one-way outbound traffic as storms bear down on the Texas coast.
The changes are meant to prevent another chaotic evacuation such as the one prompted in September by Hurricane Rita, when about 60 people, including 23 nursing home patients, died along the state's traffic-clogged highways.
"Our goal is to learn from the lessons that Hurricane Rita taught us and make Texans safer in future mass evacuations," Perry said in a statement. "These directives focus on saving lives and reducing the vulnerability of Texans — particularly those least able to fend for themselves."
The executive order includes most of the recommendations made by a task force Perry charged with figuring out what went wrong in September and how to handle evacuations more efficiently.
In addition to directing state officials to devise a plan for one-way traffic, or contraflow, the order asks the Texas Department of Transportation to find a way to provide fuel for evacuees. That was a major problem in September, as gasoline stations ran dry and stranded motorists lined highway shoulders waiting for help.
Additionally, the order directs the state's emergency management division to create a computer database of people with special needs so officials will know who needs help evacuating and where they live. The division also must work with school districts and universities to find buses to use in evacuations.
But the order does not include the panel's top suggestion — that the governor be put in charge of ordering hurricane evacuations. To do that, the Legislature would have to change a state law that leaves evacuation decisions up to county judges.
Leaders along Texas' 367-mile coast complained that their residents, who are the most vulnerable to hurri- canes, couldn't make it inland because larger cities such as Houston called for evacuations before coastal residents were able to leave.
The problem was compounded because 3 million Texans fled their homes, more than twice as many as state officials said needed to leave the projected strike zone.
Some drivers were trapped in gridlock for up to 24 hours before the first contraflow lanes opened along Interstate 45. The Texas Department of Transportation ultimately converted 487 miles of highway to one-way traffic in what it called the largest use of contraflow in the state's history.
Of the 60 people that died during the evacuation, many succumbed to heat exhaustion and heart attacks after spending long hours in their cars without water or air conditioning.
The task force said an unknown number evacuees — possibly thousands — turned around and went home. That could have had catastrophic consequences if the hurricane had hit Houston as meteorologists first predicted. Rita ultimately made landfall in a less densely populated area near the Texas/Louisiana border.
"While we will not be able to eliminate traffic when a major urban area is evacuated, we can take steps to improve the flow of traffic in future evacuations," Perry said.
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/22EVACUATE.html
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Note from Steve, Perry's the Politician who I will always remember on TV being interviewed telling the host, and us viewers, how well everything was going in Texas with the evacuations. Unfortunately for Perry, the TV screen ( split screen highway cameras ) was showing total gridlock and chaos on the Highways. To me, Perry represents a certain breed of Republican Politician who tries desperately to convince you that "all is well" when you can see for yourself that all is not well ! Prediction, Texans will re-elect Perry to another term as Texas Governor !