OMG, RJ told me that GW in Collegeport, just a couple miles from the coast near Matagorda, hasn't yet left. He and his mother are targeting for relatives in Wimberly, but that route is through Austin. They were planning to leave tomorrow (Fri) morn. Brenda at the office, her mother is in Austin, and advises the conditions are HORRIBLE. There's a huge bottleneck from people stopping for accomodations when there aren't any. Bren (lives in the next town to the east) was planning to go to Austin, but she can't get there either, so she'll come here and hang at the office (it's a strong building). GW and his mom may end up here with me or next door @ RJ's.
The Houston NBC affiliate has gone dead on the local cable system. No clue what happened there.
I've been watching the Houston CBS affiliate. They've been running traffic cam shots of I-45 showing the contraflow. It's an astonishing sight, but traffic is still CRAWLING. Shelters are being set up along the freeway routes for those who either need a rest after HOURS on the road, who are out of gas and waiting for the tanker trucks to come along that Texas Department of Transportion is dispatching, or for those who just can't take going any further.
For those who don't know, contraflow (as it's being used here) means the *incoming* side of the freeway has been reversed to *outgoing*. I understand this has never been done before, and the logistics must be mind-boggling. Both sides of the freeway, eight lanes total, ten lanes, whatever it is, are going the same direction. They planned to do that with three evacuation routes, but one of them couldn't be done due to inability to control all the entrance points.
If anybody picks up this post in the next minutes, I'm gonna be in the chat room for a bit. It's very odd to be home on a Thursday night.
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