Tens of thousands were on the highways fleeing Hurricane Rita, but at Kilkeanny’s Irish Bar in downtown Houston the party was still on.
As the powerful storm churned toward the Gulf Coast, the Texas oil metropolis and fourth-largest United States city was eerily deserted except for very few places like Kilkeanny’s, where the bar was packed with beer drinkers and the loudspeakers blared electric blues.
”They’re sticking it out,” said bartender Erin Greenwade, who had planned a house party with friends on Friday night, when Rita was expected to come ashore. ”They’re having a good time.”
It was less fun for Texans scrambling out of coastal areas in a massive northward exodus of grinding, bumper-to-bumper traffic. Many ran out of petrol and drinking water in 35°C heat, and emergency crews struggled to reach the stranded.
Anguished motorists called local radio stations, worried that their fuel was getting low or to ask how to avoid the worst traffic jams. One woman, in what appeared to be a fairly typical tale, said she had left home at 4am and was still stuck in traffic by nightfall.
By Thursday night, Houston Mayor Bill White urged people no longer to leave the city because they risked getting stuck and said water trucks were on their way to help the stranded.
”We know you’re out there. We know you’re concerned,” he said in broadcast remarks. Early in the week, White had appealed to residents to go, especially those in low-lying flood plains. Some reports said up to 1,5-million people may have fled Houston alone.
With debate still raging about the Bush administration’s slow disaster response to Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago, questions arose about emergency preparations for Rita even before it made landfall.
White bristled when a reporter asked why many petrol stations in the region had run out of fuel, saying that would have to be investigated later.
Katrina, which hit to the east and caused devastating flooding in New Orleans, clearly was on many peoples’ minds when they fled, especially after weeks of intense media coverage of that hurricane and its aftermath.
”I think it’s panic,” said Houston resident Amy Cook (27). ”We’re kind of used to storms.”
Life mostly ground to a halt in Houston’s highrise-heavy central business district and along its broad, flat avenues as Rita churned toward the coast and the city, which lies about 70km inland on a canal that links it with the Gulf.
Most businesses were closed in anticipation of the storm. The Far East Bistro, Billy Jean’s Hairstyling and Wig Salon and many other businesses boarded up windows and doors with plywood. Police were stationed at some intersections and petrol stations.
Shopping mall parking lots, usually crammed with cars even at night, were brightly lit but empty. Even Kilkeanny’s planned to close at 2am on Friday for the duration of the hurricane.
Houston has been hit before. A 1983 hurricane caused serious damage and left streets in the business district covered with broken glass from highrise windows.
Real estate agent Deedee Hildebrand remembers being most scared by the downed, live electricity lines. ”Oh, it was terrifying,” she said.
In 1900, a notorious hurricane-powered storm tide wiped out the Texas coastal island city of Galveston, killing at least 6 000 people and helping cause the city’s downfall as a commercial centre. It is considered the worst US natural disaster to date.
Now a tourism magnet with a population of 60 000, Galveston has been evacuated for Rita and authorities hope its five-metre sea wall, built after the 1900 storm, will protect it.
Les Farrington was trying to protect his wife’s Houston book store by sticking duct tape in a criss-cross pattern on its front windows so they wouldn’t shatter into the store. He said he was going to ride out the storm in the city.
”We didn’t want to leave the store,” he said. ”We’re just hunkering down and hoping we’ll have a store left to come back to.” ‒ Sapa-DPA