Rita News

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Lightning Rod
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Rita News

Post by Lightning Rod » September 24th, 2005, 12:15 am

this is an eyewitness report from a friend of mine. I got it in email today.

--------



I had a couple of emails in the last few days
with someone who reminded me of the
risk situations that we all seem to freely
choose to walk into without a second thought.
Like walking across a downtown street,
you know,
like driving your car everyday to work.
His particular philosophical crossroad
came in the middle of an ocean that insisted
on revealing to him how unprepared to deal with
her the 32 foot boat was that he was sailing on.
And yeah, shit at some point must have seemed like
it couldn't get any worse, and yeah, it sounds like
he came to terms with that moment pretty well.
But the sea only wanted to teach them a lesson that day,
and they live to tell the tale of it now.
So it was yesterday that I read his last email on the subject,
after I commuted to work north from Corsicana to Dallas
on Interstate 45, on the very evacuation route from Houston
to Dallas. I came in slowly driving at a bumper to bumper speed
of 40 miles an hour for sixty miles. By 9 AM they had both sides
of I-45 traveling one way , north from Houston to Buffalo.
By 12 AM they had both sides traveling north only all the way to Ennis.
That is 30 miles north of my town, getting home that night was looking
like a challenge. So, how could my commute home get worse now?
By 6 PM they had both sides going north from Houston to Ferris,
just 15 miles south of Dallas. Using I-45 to get home was completely
out of the question now.
So how could my commute home get worse now?
So my route home involved an extra fifty mile out of the way swing last
night.
So, how could my commute to work be worse the next day?
So, this morning I preventively got up at 3:30 and went to scope out
the six lanes of north bound traffic on I-45, actually eight lanes since
the north bound access road was 2 lanes gooing north also, and
it was going at about sixty five miles an hour....'not bad, I said' and
jumped in for the shared drive along side of my fellow citizens that have
left everything behind and have absolutely no idea what the near future
will bring for them. Maybe some will loose everything they have worked
hard for all these years. Maybe they will really never get to go home, you
know what I mean? Not ever get to go back to that faith in the future
that they had once. Out of the hundreds of thousands of them, just by
statistics....some will die in exile and never return....'jeez!' I said
to myself,
'you are the pessimist? aren't you?' but the answer was that statistics
were
100% on my side. But yes, that was a bit of a dark view of it , I have
to admit.
So I'm going down I-45 and there are a lot of cars parked on the easement.
Ran out of gas or broke down, some are parked 3 or four in a row, maybe
families taking a break from the 26 hours on the road that has only gotten
them 150 miles from Houston. and the traffic starts to slowly slow down
to about
30 miles an hour...I'm thinking...how can driving to work get much worse
for the next 40 miles? and then I see a car that had pulled over on the
median for
some reason and had caught the median grass on fire, and of course the
car is also
now on fire...thank god he was out of gas......but after we get by that
incident
the traffic stays going at 30 mph. We pass small groups of cars in the 5 AM
darkness that are circled in the median like a family of covered wagons
circled up
to protect the occupants from impending danger....we pass people sitting
on the
hoods of stranded cars, I stop behind several and ask if there is
anything I can do.
Everyone is just out of gas and needs about ten gallons or so to get to
where they
are going, I offer to syphon a few of my gallons, I got a 10 gallon
tank, it's half full,
they say 'hell, it took 15 gallons to 20 miles last night'. Tired
people, sleepy people,
lost and stranded people. I go on northward. Just before Ennis the
bright minds
of the Texas Transportation Dept. merge all six lanes into 3 again, what
a brilliant
move that is. We're all going 20 mph now and slowing down more every
time we see
an ambulance at the sight of a parked car on the side of the road. I
decide to take
the next and drive on the access road. That turns out to be more
productive and soon
I'm doing 45 mph. The scenery doesn't change much. The gas/convenience
stores are
full of people and cars, cars parked totally haphazardly like in a
science fiction movie
scene....it's looking more and more like a science fiction movie all the
time this morning.
I pass a lot of the slow drivers, the very tired folk, and the traffic
looks like it is moving
well on I-45 so I jump back on, we're going 45 or so again now. Cars
pull over now
and then, sometimes I pull over 'Need something?' I don't know why I do
it, I'm not
carrying a damned thing with me..."I need some gas, got any?".... I'm
sorry .
I get to Wilmer, that's 20 miles from work, been on the road for about 2
hours,
going about 40 mph when see this sea of instant break lights flash all
at one time.
Oh shit, shit, shit, how could the drive get any worse that this, shit.
I do my normal
maneuver whenever I see a wall of brake lights at one time, I bail off
the freeway
across the highway embankment and get over to the access road and keep going
hoping to beat the back up before it clogs the access road too. Just
then I see it.
Thick black smoke rising instantly from just up ahead, then flames leap
in the air,
all the cars come to a screeching emergency stop. I'm caught in the
sardine can of
modern traffic about 150 feet from the source of the thick billowing
black smoke
and flames. In the 6 AM dark I am trying to figure out what the hell it
is. I'm killing
the engine. I'm opening the door. And suddenly a bright blue flash
explosion sends
part of the smoke ball 75 feet in the air. A small part hits the hood of
the truck, I
instinctively duck my body behind the dash of the truck, people are
running past me.
I get out to look to see if I can figure it out and whoosshh bammm
something shoots
horizontal flame forty feet straight out the side two or three
vehicles on the access
road get prayed with the flames, I can feel the heat all the way over
where I am like
someone just opened an oven, I don't like the feeling at all. By now
it's cop cars and
fire engines and people moving away and the black smoke turns into the
brightest
set of flames you can imagine, the embankment is on fire the opposite
side of the access
road is on fire fire extinguishers are praying here and there the
firemen are dousing what
is now clearly the metal skeleton of a travel bus. The skeleton is
melting before our eyes,
glowing red hot metal falling in on itself. I'm looking at the sky, I'm
looking at the fire,
I'm looking in the faces of these tired refugees, mothers, fathers,
grandparents,
road weary exiles....I'm looking at the sky....three hours after I left home
I'm feeling like that stranger in that far away strange land........
Wish I could describe it better..
to be able to feed you a graphic
so intense that it would tilt your balance
and fill your mind with a image you could not turn off
until I am through with the heat
and the smoking taste of it
the scared, the very scared, the tired, the numb of it,
the angry, the hot steel branded image of it,
of what it was to be one hundred feet away
from a place where I know
for absolutely damned sure,
there was a place
in this universe today
where
shit could just not possibly have gotten any worse.

Nursing home evacuees on a bus to safety in Dallas,
24 perished, 12 survived, the driver and a nurse
also survived.
I went to work.
Now,
I'm going the long way home again.
I've had enough day for one day.
"These words don't make me a poet, these Eyes make me a poet."

The Poet's Eye

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stilltrucking
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Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
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Post by stilltrucking » September 24th, 2005, 7:09 am

Why was Houston evacuated?
How many Huricanes have hit that city?
Quite a few i think
I don't remember the city ever being evacuated.
Galveston yes, but Houston never.
Fifty miles inland from the gulf.
My thoughts as one million people hit the road.
What will the death toll be.
So Katrina they don't react.
Rita they over react.

saw
Posts: 8278
Joined: May 23rd, 2008, 7:32 am
Location: B'more, Maryland

Re: Rita News

Post by saw » December 2nd, 2017, 11:07 am

Houston revisited...LRod musings from 2005 sync with the present day in Houston
If you do not change your direction
you may end up where you are heading

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Doreen Peri
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Joined: July 10th, 2004, 3:30 pm
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Re: Rita News

Post by Doreen Peri » December 5th, 2017, 3:21 am

I miss him very much. I miss everybody I loved. They're all gone now. Evacuated. The lot of them. Never will have a lover again. It sucks.

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stilltrucking
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Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas

Re: Rita News

Post by stilltrucking » December 26th, 2017, 4:42 pm

I miss his voice, sometimes I try to imagine what he would say about President tweet, Still trying to get over losing two more cyber pals on studio eight in 2017.

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