Shelter in place during a disaster?

I hear a lot of people talking about wilderness survival in case of disaster. I was close to Houston during the Hurricane Rita evacuation. The hurricane didn't hit, but 2.5 million people evacuated from the area. This is just a fraction of the population. It was taking up to eight hours to drive 100 miles. I have never seen anything like it and hope I never will again.

I really don't believe that there's a whole lot of wilderness left. Not in the U. S. at least. Sheltering in place is probably the best, or only choice, at least at the beginning of a larger disaster, then start moving if you begin to run low on supplies. Then again, if you only keep a couple of days of supplies in your home, you'll be the one clogging up the freeways and praying the FEMA guys show up before somebody knocks you over the head for your last bottle of water. If that hurricane had hit Houston, I wouldn't have wanted to be near the coast, but being on those roads could have been a LOT worse.

Another thing, my location was about an hour and a half drive from Houston. I had a job running shipping for a local company. I had seven large trucks in the area and about ten gas driven vehicles. A portion of the products that we were shipping was bottled water, so we had to operate. I used fleet fuel at stations instead of storing my own fuel. There was still plenty of diesel at the end of the day but there wasn't a drop of gas to be had. One more day and the gas engine portion of the fleet would have been grounded. The only way we could operate anyway was knowledge of all the dirt roads to get to our delivery points and I still had to turn trucks around before they ran out of fuel. The fuel lines were running out into the highways. It took almost a week for all the stations to get their gas deliveries and be back to normal. (again, the hurricane didn't hit Houston)

Now you start thinking to yourself, what if it did. For one thing, all those fuel deliveries generally come from Houston, so don't count on being able to buy any. Especially if some of the refineries are damaged. The population of New Orleans when Katrina hit was approx 454,865, the population of Harris County was 3,886,207 in 2006 plus another 1,031,126 in Chambers, Fort Bend, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller Counties which are also part of the Houston Metro Area. So, at approx 5 million people in the Houston Metro Area that is about eight times the size as New Orleans. When Katrina hit New Orleans approximately 80 of the Houston Metro Area Evacuated instead of the 2.5 mil that did it would have been around 3,933,866 people evacuating and another 983,466 people stranded and dying in the city. That's twice the amount of people staying behind as were in New Orleans to begin with. And another million and a half on the road. (all my numbers were taken from Wikipedia)

No, don't plan on heading down the road if disaster strikes. You'll be lucky to get out of your driveway. Oh yeah, and all those people on the road are heading your direction. Lock your doors because the criminals left along with everybody else.

Written by: InfoJunky

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