Link to Insta commentsPlease think twice before trying to leave Houston en masse. No evacuation orders have been issued for the city. #Harvey— Sylvester Turner (@SylvesterTurner) August 25, 2017
What some people defending the Mayor of Houston have to say...
There's a huge difference between evacuating a city like Houston (2.4 Million) and Corpus Christi (326K).— Kam Franklin (@KamFranklin) August 27, 2017
17 comments:
Hindsight is 20 20. The mayor is a tool in just not admitting he gave wrong advice and moving on, but I am tired of leftists playing this double standard on natural disasters.
Yeah I get why this is not a straight parallel to Nagin. Nagin had way more lead time and the flooding in NO was due to leftist fund diversion anyway. Still, the leftists started politicizing this immediately and are preparing to go full tilt 'cause it's all they got. Exploiting misery for political gain r them.
The issue is the track shifted at the figurative last minute, but who counts on that?
Anywho, you have a black mayor named Sylvester, so of course it's now racial.
I've defended the Mayor at Instapundit and over at AoS. First and foremost; Texans aren't as politically interested, or woke if you will, than the rest of the country, particularly California and the NE, but also obviously those that follow politics. Technically, the Houston mayoral race isn't even run via party affiliation but then we all know who gets their bread buttered from where. Generally though, we just don't care to make issues political, particularly when they are not. Hurricane Harvey is (despite an idiot on Twitter) a natural disaster, and therefore is not (despite many other idiots everywhere) is not a politically made disaster. Every area currently flooded and having water rescues are within the 100 year floodplain. That people were allowed to build there is politically motivated, but those decisions were made decades ago (and to be fair, Democrats ran the city and state back then).
But the other thing is, the Mayor's advice is also the advice coming from the local county judges (we call our heads of counties, judges, for some reason). And the county judges for Harris and Fort Bend are both Republican. And the advice is sound. So far, Hurricane Harvey, which is a worse flooding event than Ike or Allison, has caused less loss of life than the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita. If you don't live in a floodplain, there is little reason to evacuate. Some people do live in areas with poor drainage (we call in ponding), and there is also logistics problems that Houston will start facing in a day or 2, as stores won't be able to get resupplied. But we aren't there yet, and evacuation needs to start only in a few places. The mayor's comment is accurate; think twice. That's how most of us read it. By the way, the Harris County Judge Ed Emmett ran on the phrase "hunker down", and it was his slogan post Rita and when facing Ike. It was only after Ike that he quit saying it as a literal catch phrase after every press conference.
Besides, Mayor Turner is far better than Mayor Parker, who ran the city the way Hillary Clinton would have run the US had she made President. The Mayor prior to Parker pushed through a "water drainage" fee (they couldn't call it a tax, for the exact same procedural reasons Dem's couldn't for Obamacare, because then they couldn't have pushed it through). Mayor Parker got to avoid the politics of that act, but she then proceeded to use the money collected as part of the general fund, and not, you know, fixing the city drainage as promised. The City of Houston was even sued and lost for lying about the use of funds, but it was a hollow victory, because the money was already spent. This is the same Mayor that by edict gave us transgendered restrooms (did I mention she is a Lesbian?), and when a grassroots effort raised the signatures to make the issue a ballot initiative (to overturn her edict); she through out the signatures by edict and was taken to court and loss on that issue too. Mayor Turner is definitely a liberal, but he's a step in the right direction compared to Mayor Parker. Hell, he would probably be called a Black White Supremacist by most liberals in this country.
Alas, I live in the unincorporated parts of Harris County, so he's not even my mayor and I can't vote for him (even though our local MUD just a made a deal with the city that allows Houston to raise funds from sales taxes in our area!)
For those interested; another issue is starting to become a problem. Parts of SE Texas is starting to become subdivided into small islands. This will become a logistics problem in providing supplies (food, water, clothing) for residents. They may be high and dry, they might even have power; but they'll soon start running out of food (and water plants are starting to go down). That will increase evacuations, such as was just announced for Ft. Bend county.
BTW; I also agree with everyone about the crappy double standards. It was what, a week ago, that Salon or someone already said Trump failed this test? F-that. What is there, maybe 5 deaths? Statewide. Hurricane Ike was 50, of which over 20 where in Houston alone. And we had over a week warning before Ike made landfall. One week ago, Harvey was expected to make landfall as a Tropical Storm. Wednesday was when they started saying maybe a hurricane.
Having lived through hurricanes since Hazel in '54, two of the things I look for when deciding where to live are flood planes and water courses.
We get hurricanes here, but the land is hilly enough that if my house goes underwater then we have far worse problems than a hurricane.
How much rain did you get there - I have been out of the loop since last week.
No one should have to tell anyone to leave. Make up your own mind.
My neighborhood received 22.8" of rain over the weekend. It is still raining, so I expect at least another 4" today.
Like you, I chose carefully where the house is. I'm high and dry. But it is quickly becoming a 3x6mile island. Water rescues are now occurring south of my location. Evacuations are occurring to my north. I have a lake to my east (it will need another 4' to reach its 1994 crest, and then about twice that to become a threat to the home). That leaves west bound as a potential escape route, but that's where the storm was. I'll be fine, but its going to miserable for the next 48 hours, when the river to the north is expected to crest.
Allen, they are telling them to leave based on having to manage flood control districts. The two flood control reservoirs (Barker and Addicks) are at capacity. They are going to have to release more water than normal, while also allowing more water to fill in than normal. This will flood 36 neighborhoods that normally would not flood. So they are notifying residents. In fact, they warned them last night, so people would have time to get things in order, and the evacuations started this morning.
Leland, thanks for the local report. My sister got married and lived in Katy back in the 70's/80's. She was living in Lake Travis when she died. The lake was bone dry. It's filled up now!
Leland, I hope you remain safe and above the high water line. That is some very serious business, for sure.
And, as you know, without me saying so, that is a shit-ton of rain. The worst I ever experienced was 7" of rain in 24 hours during hurricane Agnes in 1972. That was as devastating a storm as I have ever seen and I can't imagine what more than 3 times that amount of rain is even like. Feel free to send some of it up this way.
Best of luck to your and your family.
My granddaughter is on scholarship at Baylor University at Waco. She lives in Florida so she has lots of experience with hurricanes. Her classmates are giving her crap for bringing the hurricanes with her.
She is a hell of a lot smarter than me. She is starting as a junior at 18 as she got her Associates degree while still in High School. She wants to be a brain surgeon.
I told her she can experiment on me.
One cannot operate on what does not exist.
They just reported another 8-12" rain over the next 24 hours. One hospital near Tomball was just evacuated. The fact is, today was much worse for Houston than yesterday in terms of flooding. Some streams are going down. The ones around me won't peak until Wednesday around noon.
My mom's home will likely flood. She's safe with my sister, who is on a much smaller island than mine.
I actually did some work from home this morning. This included a call to some folks in Alexandria Egypt. They were watching all this stuff on CNN International and asked many questions. It is good to know of the interests.
The really cool thing is that about a week from now, life will start getting back to normal. California will still have Antifa. I'm privileged to live in Texas!
Texas is a great state. Houston has become a very international city and it seems to work well. Most of the immigrants are from countries w/ work ethic and mainstream religious views. That's what some folks I know tell me. I'll rely on Leland to confirm or deny. The Vietnamese immigrants are adapting well in cities I've lived and there are a lot in Houston area.
Officially, City of Houston and Harris County recognizes three languages for documentation (voter registration, ballots, and jury duty): English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. People are often amazed at our Vietnamese population size. I always laugh when people in lily white enclaves like New England think Texas is racist based solely that we live south of them.
Post a Comment