Well it only took me 24 and 1/2 hours to drive from Houston to Dallas but I made it. That's a drive that normally only takes 4 hours. I left Houston at 4:30 am yesterday and got in at 5am this morning. All I can say is, whatever you've heard on the news about how bad things were on the highways, it was actually much worse. There are thousands of people who either broke down, had flat tires, wrecks, or just ran out of gas trying to get out of Houston. I got lucky finding a gas station in Houston that still had gas. I had to wait in line for half an hour and they ran out of gas right after I got mine.

The scene on the highways was kaos. It looked like something out of a disaster movie. Everyone was out of their cars looking around waiting for someone to come help. They opened up the southbound lanes to northbound traffic and people were making their own lanes on the emergency lanes and in the grass. I counted 17 lanes of traffic at one time all going out of the city and it was still bumper to bumper. Cars would run out of gas in the middle of the road or overheat and there was nowhere they could go. At one time it took me 3 1/2 hours to go 5 miles. It was so slow that people were getting out of their cars, walking down the side of the freeway and shopping for food and drinks and coming back to their cars which hadn't moved 10 feet. It was 100 degrees and most people weren't running their A/C cause they were trying to conserve gasoline.

I was exhausted having to drive for that long and because it was so nerve racking. You had to watch out for broken down vehicles or people running accross the freeway. I would have pulled over and tried to sleep but I was afraid that traffic would be even worse when I woke up.

I truly think our mayor, Mayor White, and all the local and state police forces deserve a medal though. They were really on the ball opening up more outbound lanes and such. The state police were also trying to help broken down motorists and directing the rest of us to gas stations that still had gas. The gas lines could be 50 cars deep in some places. I mostly passed those up hoping I'd get lucky down the road and fortunately I did. I never even knew Texas had that many State Troopers cause they were at every offramp. I've heard they are now giving gas to anyone who has run out and trying to either fix peoples cars or get them other transportation. There are about 6 major arteries running out of houston and the people in charge were on top of them all. I heard on the news that just in one 24 hour period they moved 2.7 million people out of the city and I believe it.

Man that was a nightmare. Let's hope Rita takes that northward turn because the Houston area has 10 times the population that New Orleans did. A disaster here will make Katrina look easy.

On a side note, I had told some of you about some people we were searching for that were missing from Katrina. Just Tuesday we found the last two people we were looking for. It was a mother and her 12 year old son. The mother was working at Memorial Medical Center in downtown New Orleans. That's the one where 45 people died. Happy to say they were alive and well in a shelter in Mississippi. Took us 3 weeks to find them and I was starting to worry but fortunatly we found everyone we were looking for and they were all alive and well.

Wow. What a mess. It looks like people are trying to get safe, and that's good. There's just so many people. Take care, Jet. (and thanks for the firsthand account)

Thanks LGM. It looks like we may have gotten very lucky, the storm is moving more to the north and will miss us in Galveston and South Houston. Atleast most of the really bad winds and water anyway. As you can imagine I'm not looking forward to the drive back to Houston....

Wow, thanks for the report! Sounds like total insanity! Glad you made it.

Red Seal is from Houston also. Last I heard he was ready to get out of town. Hope he made it too.

Keep us posted on what it's like down there!

All the best,

-Rx

My sister lives in Dallas. I received a note from her yesterday. She and her husband went to 15 different gas stations before finding one with gas. The grocery stores they went to were out of bottled water. The parking lots of hotels and convention centers were packed with people trying to find a place to stay. Hopefully they all found shelter before the wind and rains hit.

It's mostly just the gas stations that are near the freeways that are out of gas. Many evacuees continued on to other places and needed more gas. Most of the gas stations where I am are functioning normally. Dallas did probably get about 1 million people in it or through it in a 48 hour period.

Believe it or not im expieriencing the huricane right now!!! B) I live in canton texas (east texas) and right now it is down to a cat 1!!!! The wind isnt blowing that hard....sustained winds to about 35 mph and gusts to 40 mph...
we live right by a gas station...but it only sells diesel..(thats cus down here in the heart of texas u will c tractors pulled up to gas stations!!!! %)

Lol yeah well I hope you guys don't get any damage there. Good luck to you!