Evacuation Do's and Don'ts

There are many things that haunt me about Hurricane Rita, but this one tops them all.

Early in my 12 hour drive to Tomball, I was driving with the windows down to save gas, probably about 1-3 miles an hour at this point, but we were still moving, barely. Slow enough for me to have a conversation with the driver next to me. A young guy from Galveston asked me if I had any water to spare. He had been driving all day. "It's in the trunk," was my pathetic reply.

At the time, it really seemed like a prohibitive sort of arrangement. I would -- but it's in the trunk. I would have to stop my car, open my trunk, and get out a water bottle. It's not that I didn't WANT to share, or that I didn't have water to spare, but it isn't the sort of thing you DO in the middle of a freeway. And anyway it was the first thing that came into my head and then it was out there.

"Thanks anyway," he said, or something along those lines. By the time I realized, "obviously I can stop and get you water -- we're not going anywhere" I had lost him and probably would have been too embarrassed to reverse my original response.

Later as the traffic slowed to a halt, and I spent hours in one place all night long, and eventually had to relieve myself in the middle of rt. 290, and more and more hours passed without sleep, I kept thinking about how I should have given him some water.

But I can't beat myself up too much about it. These are lessons you learn in new circumstances; new sets of rules.