According to a September 27 Associated Press report, the toll during the evacuation is now 31 deaths in Harris County alone, which includes Houston. This does not include the 23 Bellaire nursing home patients who perished in a bus explosion just outside Dallas.

The elderly evacuees died September 23 when the bus caught fire due to a mechanical failure, leading to the explosion of oxygen tanks used by patients on board. State officials immediately placed blame on the bankrupt busing company, Global Limo, and its driver for the accident. They took no responsibility for conditions in which the normally four-hour trip took 16 hours.

Deaths during the evacuation included an elderly woman who died of heat-related illness in Richmond, Texas, after being stuck in traffic. Yesenia Mathis, 17, stopped breathing and died as her family’s van was trapped in traffic on I-45 just outside of Houston. Another child in the same van had a body temperature of 108 degrees when doctors first examined her. Both children were disabled.

Major interstate and county roads resembled parking lots. Traffic backed up on I-45 from Houston to Dallas stretched about 100 miles with average speeds at three miles an hour for much of the way. Gas stations ran out of fuel along evacuation routes toward Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas.

In spite of frequent radio reports that police and military would be delivering gasoline to stranded motorists, these reporters didn’t see a single police or military gas delivery and none of the promised relief stations. The Houston Chronicle reported that in the Woodlands, a wealthy suburb of Houston, shotgun-bearing cops were posted at filling station pumps.

Along with hundreds of other cars, we were blocked from exits by police when we sought relief and gas. At one blocked exit we saw people climbing over barricades to get to facilities, even though they had to leave their cars on the highway. We witnessed long lines where gas stations were open and heard reports of those waiting in such lines for several hours.

People often helped each other in trying to get gas, giving directions to get to rural roads, working on disabled cars, and sometimes sharing water and food.

Jennifer Chavez, 28, made it to San Antonio at 3:00 a.m. September 23 after leaving southwest Houston at 10:00 a.m. the day before. Nine months pregnant, she along with her sister Christina and friend Armando Peña traveled in a caravan that kept in touch by cell phone and at times by walking up the highway to talk with the others stuck in traffic. Like others on the road, they turned off air conditioners, in spite of extreme heat, to save gas. Chavez said she felt labor pains several times during the trip and almost passed out at one point.

After getting a call from one of their friends who had run out of gas, they turned back, adding hours to their trip, to find some scarce overpriced gas for their friend. “They told us to leave and to take these routes,” Chavez said. “They could have done the math and known we would all be stopped in traffic.”

“Aren’t they treating us a little like they did those people in New Orleans?” Chavez continued. “President Bush and all of them said they didn’t know there were problems with the levees. But they knew and they did nothing. They didn’t do anything for those people and they didn’t do anything for us. They don’t show us any respect.”

José Aravena, Anthony Dutrow, and Tom Leonard contributed to this article.
 
 
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