Rita and gridlock

A (slightly edited) email I just sent to NRO's Jonah Goldberg, who's presenting "competing views" about the gridlock and gas shortages as folks have been evacuating from the Houston area as Hurricane Rita approaches:

My preliminary impression, In a nutshell: Don't blame Bush, state, or local officials for the evac gridlock. Blame Katrina and the local news media.

Katrina + news media hysteria = lots of folks in non-flood-prone areas of Houston, who otherwise would have hunkered down altogether or at least waited until tomorrow to evac, instead hitting the road yesterday afternoon, last night, and today = avoidable degree of gridlock.

IMHO, local media have done a very bad job of distinguishing between "mandatory evacuation" areas (truly coastal counties, storm-surge areas) and elsewhere. Some of the adjacent coastal county officials are already bitching (publicly and unproductively) at Houston/Harris County officials for "ignoring the plan," which was to get the coastal zones evac'd first. Since so many Houstonians are also on the road ("early," in the view of those adjacent county folks), congestion is much worse for everyone. But I think the "fault" for that, if fault there be, can be laid more at the feet of the breathless media rather than Houston/Harris County officials. And ordinary folks are hyper-receptive to the hype because of Katrina.

If folks have actually LISTENED to what Mayor Bill White has been saying on TV, he's only been twisting arms for the mandatory evac zone folks to leave, plus those otherwise at high risk (e.g., hospital/nursing homes, those in mobile homes, those in houses repeatedly flooded by bayous in past storms). But I'm inferring that Mayor White — a friend of mine from law school, who'd probably like to be Sen. or Gov. White someday if a Democrat can ever get elected again in a state-wide Texas race — doesn't want to DISCOURAGE rank-and-file Houstonians from evacuating either. So neither he nor the Harris County officials have been explicitly calling for high-ground Houstonians to sit tight for now. And thus, when amplified by the media megaphones and imprecision in the media's reporting, Mayor White saying anything at all about evacuation by anyone comes across to most people like "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

TxDoT was slow in getting the interstates set up for contra-flow on the normally in-bound lanes. My guess is that they underestimated how quickly inlanders would start evac'g and how quickly the gridlock would therefore develop. But if that's blameworthy, it's probably only so as a failure to anticipate just how much Katrina and the media hysteria would affect local attitudes. The gas shortage problem is almost entirely a function of the gridlock.

There's essentially nothing on the local media to remind folks that, for example, Houston isn't dependent on vulnerable levees, below sea level, and in between a huge lake and the Mississippi. The man-on-the-street interviews with those planning to stay are always spun to make them look crazy.

How the actual storm will turn out remains to be seen. And Nature may prove me wrong. Maybe by this time next week, everyone will be agreed that there ought to have been a complete, total evacuation covering all of Houston/Harris County.

But so far, IMHO, it's mostly been a perfect [media] storm. Sheesh, does everybody on the TV news want to be the next Dan Rather?

(FWIW, Weiss and I are hunkered down, at home with my emergency supplies and a full tank of gas. I've seen three major hurricanes since I moved to Houston, plus a buncha lesser but still impressive tropical storms, and I *DO* respect Mother Nature. But I'd rather be emailing you from my living room right now than out-of-gas on a gridlocked interstate, and I think I have a rational basis for concluding that I'm also safer here. My ex, who lives nearby and has our four kids with her, independently came to the same conclusion, and I certainly won't leave town while they're still here. So wish us all luck.)

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UPDATE (Thu Sep 22 @ 7:50pm): I'm not exactly on pins and needles — we're still quite a while from landfall, wherever Rita comes ashore, and I've got to save some adrenaline for later! — but I'm fairly focused on family, friends, neighbors, and my own situation at the moment. So when the phone rang a few minutes ago, it took me a good fifteen seconds, and several patient repetitions from the person on the other end of the line, before I snapped to who was calling — Generalissimo Duane (a/k/a Radio Blogger), inviting me to do an impromptu voice appearance on Hugh Hewitt's show! Lotsa fun talking with Hugh, as always — he never asks exactly what I expect him to ask. Hugh was kind enough to have me back after a station break, and I was only a little freaked out when I realized that the "on-hold" music I was hearing during the break was the theme from HBO's "Six Feet Under." Quirky, but not predictive, I hope.

According to the local NBC affiliate's website:

Officials said that residents not in evacuation zones should no longer evacuate.

"Given the conditions of the roads, and the changes in the storm, if you have not left (by 7 p.m. Thursday), the time for leaving your home, if you're not in the A or the B zone, the time for leaving your home has passed," [Harris County Judge Robert] Eckels said.

That's consistent with something Hugh told me he'd heard (or read) that the Mayor had just announced.

I'm well outside the mandatory evacuation zones:

So if you're in the City of Houston/Harris County, unless you're in a special risk category or have other exceptional circumstances, you're probably better off hunkering down at this point.

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UPDATE (Fri Sep 23 @ 1:00am): Here's an example of what I'm talking about, this time with the Houston Chronicle as the offender:

For the most part, the officials didn't offer much analysis of what might have gone wrong. They focused instead on the scramble to keep thousands of motorists from what Mayor Bill White called a potential "death trap" should the storm strike while they were stranded on the road.

That "death trap" quote has been given huge prominence, and I'm absolutely certain Mayor White regrets ever letting it slip through his lips. But it's being way overstressed and ripped wildly out of context. Here's how it's reported by the Dallas Morning News, which is considerably better:

"If the hurricane comes in at a certain angle," said Houston Mayor Bill White, "being on the highway is a death trap."

Later, he expressed confidence that traffic would be cleared in time

But even in this latter example, the media have highlighted one speculative phrase about a worst-case scenario — a phrase that creates sensation and sells papers, I guess, but that is not at all indicative of the main thrust of what Mayor White's been saying.

Yeah, if Rita makes a hard left turn, and its eye rips up the Ship Channel and then does a ballet dance right up Interstate 45 — maybe pausing to make a circuit or two of Loop 610 — and yeah, if people are still stuck on those interstates more than 24 hours from now, at 4:00 a.m. Saturday, which is the current prediction for landfall, then that could be very ugly. But what gets the lede: "Mayor calmly reassures residents that help is en route to stranded motorists, vows no one will be left on the roadways, major freeway evacuation routes now flowing freely"? No, his "death trap" line.

That, in my book, is simply irresponsible journalism. It causes undue panic. And panic can make things worse, even get people killed.

My fellow Houston law-blogger Tom Kirkendall writes:

[M]y sense of what what has made this evacuation so arduous is the large number of people evacuating who do not live in the mandatory evacuation areas. I agree that most folks are much better off battening down the hatches and staying put, but it's hard to criticize folks — particularly those who do not have a safe haven to ride out the storm — for wanting to get the hell out. The number of non-mandatory evacuees surprised governmental officials, so they were a bit slow in getting all freeway lanes going in the same direction to accomodate the evacuees. But given how well those officials have handled preparations for this storm generally, in addition to how well they performed in connection with accomodating the Katrina evacuees, I'm more than willing to cut them some slack for making a few misjudgments.

Yup, ditto that.

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UPDATE (Fri Sep 23 @ 3:35pm): Thanks to those who've linked this post. Among them have been Jesse Taylor at Pandagon and Houston Chronicle Sci Guy Eric Berger. Here's a (slightly edited) reprint of a comment I left in response to Mr. Berger's post:

Eric, thanks for the link and the quote. Those who follow the link will see that I have a more specific observation: That the media (including, unfortunately, the Chronicle) did an inconsistent and often very poor job of transmitting what public officials were saying about evacuation.

My intent when I first posted late yesterday was as much to inform — that's why I included a map graphic showing the evacuation zones, which I've seen much too infrequently on TV or in the Chronicle's online coverage -- as to criticize. And to the extent I was criticizing, or am here, it's with the hope of prompting changes now, in the short term.

The "staged evacuation plan" became almost meaningless when the media was giving the misimpression (my exaggeration, but only a little) that Mayor White and County Judge Eckels were screaming "Everyone flee for your lives!" That's not what they were saying, nor even a close paraphrase; and it's actually contrary to what they were saying (although the public had to read or listen very carefully to figure that out).

It certainly was appropriate for the media to inform people in the mandatory evac zones, or otherwise at special risk, that officials were calling for them to get out. But that should have been combined, in my humble opinion, with a frequent, deliberate repetition of information (a) about where the evac zones actually are, and that (b) officials had not called for a mass, simultaneous evacuation of all of Houston and Harris County.

Journalists, whether print or electronic (for that matter, including even bloggers), can't be "responsible" if they're not being "accurate." And with due respect, the fact that Rita was originally expected to be a Cat 5 storm and to track right over Houston doesn't excuse inaccuracies; that the storm has lessened and changed course just means that the consequences of those inaccuracies might not be so terrible (and let's hope that's the case). I hope we're both in a position to continue this civil debate Sunday!

Eric posted a very civil reply, but within a few more comments he was being taken to task by another commenter for "link[ing] to such a blantantly partisan blog (Beldar), even if it is on a relatively neutral subject. Scrolling down, it seems like a waste to give that breathless blogger the time of day." Likewise, Mr. Taylor perceived my post to be claiming that the Rita gridlock was "the liberal media's fault." My (slightly edited reply) on his blog:

Mr. Taylor, thanks for the link to my post, and this opportunity to leave a reply comment. I am indeed a conservative blogger, and I'm frequently a critic of what I perceive to be liberal political bias in the media. In this case, however, while I have fault to find with the media, it's pretty much unrelated to politics. My reference to Dan Rather was likewise not political (this time), but rather to his early career hurricane coverage that got him network notice.

To the very, very limited extent that politics has anything to do with this, in fact, my post was intended in part to defend Houston's mayor, Bill White — a prominent Democrat elected in a mostly nonpartisan city election whom I know well, and consider a friend, from attending Texas Law School with him in the late 1970s. I think neither he nor (Republican, not that that's significant here) Harris County Judge Robert Eckels are guilty of messing up the "phased evacuation by zone" plan, as they're being accused of having done by some officials from coastal counties whose evacuations were complicated by the gridlock. I think they were reasonably clear in only urging folks in the mandatory evacuation zones to flee. But media exaggeration and misreporting of their remarks, plus understandably heightened fears after Katrina, resulted in a far greater number of folks on the freeways than there needed to be or than anyone ever expected.

(As I write this comment, by the way, Mayor White's holding a televised press conference, and virtually the first words out of his mouth were (my close quote): "Now's not the time to be moving, now's the time to be taking shelter.")

I really, really don't think this is, or ought to be, about politics, nor (contrary to Mr. Taylor's other suggestion in his post) much about race either.