Rita: anyone in harm's way?

[Anonymous]

It is hard to believe there is another
major hurricane to hit land in the
same general area of the US within
a month.

If in harm's way, what city and when is
evacuation?

[Deborah]

RITA:
Storm May Be the Coup de Grace for the American Economy and Many of
Us As Well
doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/092105_rita_storm.shtml>
by Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes
only.

September 21st, 2005 1530 PST (FTW) ? As I pack my bags to head to Washington for Congressional Black Caucus hearings on the September 11th attacks (to be conducted this Friday and Saturday) my inbox is being progressively flooded with emails from inside sources in the energy industry about what Hurricane Rita is now likely to accomplish ? the near-complete destruction of an already teetering US economy.

Fully 30% of all US refining capacity is in the target zone. Perhaps most importantly, almost every refinery capable of producing diesel fuel is in immediate danger. This promises (especially in the wake of Katrina) a devastating and irreplaceable shortage of the diesel fuel needed to power America's harvest of grain and food crops this month and next. Without diesel fuel to power the harvesters and combines, crops may be left to rot in the ground presenting a double whammy: food shortages (with prices that may treble or quadruple) and export defaults negatively impacting the financial markets and trade deficit.

Even before Rita strikes, fully 30% of all domestic natural gas production is shut in. The US cannot import natural gas from overseas like it can both crude and refined products. Repair work on infrastructure damaged by Katrina has been halted as crews have been evacuated. The remaining half of Gulf energy production undamaged by Katrina is directly in Rita's crosshairs. Natural gas prices are up over 110% and home heating oil futures are up almost 70% before Rita even gets here. Since Katrina, US domestic oil production is down one million barrels per day (from 5Mbpd to 4 Mbpd). We were producing 9 Mbpd less than a decade ago.

Peak Oil has made replacement of losses almost impossible even as Saudi heavy-sour is being spurned as useless around the world, even with discounts of up to $10 and $12 per barrel.

A Bloomberg article today contains a quotation from a Wall Street energy expert as saying, "`Rita is developing into our worst-case
scenario,' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at Fimat USA in New York. `This is headed right into our other major refining center just after all the damage done to facilities in Louisiana. From an energy perspective it doesn't get any worse than this.'"

The Chairman of Valero Energy agrees with the Bloomberg assessment calling Rita a potentially national disaster. His opinion is important because Valero operates more refineries in the US than any other company.

CNN is now predicting $5 per gallon gasoline and this will not likely go away with market manipulations. We had not yet experienced the
permanent spikes resulting from Katrina, and the emergency reserves of the United States' Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the International Energy Agency have already been tapped once and not refilled.

The South Texas Project nuclear plant ? one of the largest in the country ? is being completely shut down in preparation for Rita's landfall. It is only 12 miles from the Texas coast and almost dead center in the hurricane's projected path. Texas has its own power grid but catastrophic electricity shortages could easily ripple
throughout the country in a short time.  electricity lost from that that facility will only be added to what is lost from other facilities powered by now critically short supplies of natural gas.

For those of you who expect FEMA to behave any differently in Texas than it did in New Orleans you are in for a crude awakening. FEMA will do what it must now do to preserve even a functioning part of America's governing and economic infrastructure. Saving lives will be
one of the least important functions in its mandate. While I had serious doubts about America's ability to recover from Katrina, I am
certain that ? barring divine intervention ? the United States is finished; not only as a superpower, but possibly even as a single,
unified nation with the arrival of Hurricane Rita.

http://tinyurl.com/7dxzgj2997

[Anonymous]

I believe this is the largest evacuation ever:

Evacuees from the Texas coast who need to find a
special needs shelter should report to one of
five general population shelter hub sites.

General population shelter hub sites are:

Austin
Delco Center
4601 Pecan Brook Dr
Austin

Bryan-College Station
Gateway Center
Highway 6 North to College Station,
Exit Raceway Road
Bryan

Huntsville
I-45 North to Huntsville
Exit Mile Marker 101½ (Watch for signs)

Lufkin
Lufkin High School
309 S. Medford (Off Loop 287 East)
Exit Ford Chapel Road

Nacogdoches
Fredonia Hill Baptist Church
1711 South Street

San Antonio
McCreless Mall
4100 S. New Braunfels (Off I-37)

In the processing at these hub sites, people with
special needs will be directed to satellite
shelters based on individual needs.

Definition:

Generally, people with special needs include: the
elderly, the paralyzed, those confined to
wheelchairs, people who required home health care or hospice care, those with mental retardation or
mental health problems who were not in mental health or mental retardation facilities, the disabled, the blind, those with chronic conditions requiring periodic attention and others who have confining or restrictive conditions that would preclude them from staying in general population public shelters.

The special needs category does not include those
who need to be hospitalized or those who are
acutely ill.

[SyN]

My fam in houston are headed to st louis where most of the rest of our family is.  They say it was grid locked  people were running out of gas simple iddleing in their cars.  Alot of people turned back since they couldnt afford to fill up again and again, then only get 8 miles in as many hours.   There has to be a better way.  But at least they are now safe.  Anyone else have family out there?[ This Message was edited by: SyN on 2005-09-22 18:41 ]

[Deborah]

Third most powerful hurricane in history
Mandatory Evacuation of Galveston, Houston, Corpus Christi
1.8 Million
Highways gridlocked
All lanes used for outbound traffic for 125 miles
Trip from Houston to Dallas that normally takes 4-5 hours is taking as much as 20 hours
People stranded along the highway out of gas
Stations out of gas, very long lines where they do have gas along the way and in certain areas of Dallas

Some are going to Ok and Ar to find motel rooms
NASA evacuated, space program turned over to Russia

Good video coverage here:
http://www.wfaa.com/

[SyN]

"space program turned over to Russia"
sad yet i still snorted.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-09-22 18:45:00, SyN wrote:

""space program turned over to Russia"

LOL, damn that is a good one!

[Cynthia]

I just heard on "Nightline" that the gridlock has eased up. It seems like everyone actually LISTENED! Too bad they all decided to leave early. This time, the people that run late, made out the best. I think that mayor of Gavelston (sp?) is a nut. Actually, she seems like an intellgent, level headed woman. I just see no reason to take that risk. LEAVE! We don't need any hero's, not if everyone gets out! I feel badly for the pets that have no options. Nature can be cruel.

[Anonymous]

This sucks. Guess we shouldn't have spent so much money "playing in the sandbox". Shit. Fuck. Damn.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-09-22 21:21:00, Cynthia wrote:

I think that mayor of Gavelston (sp?) is a nut.

Perhaps it was the editing, but I was so dissapointed when she responded to a reporters
question:

"Are you evacuating?"

"No, I have been here, x amount of years and I have never evacuated."

What a stupid thing to say while trying to
motivate people to leave her city!

If she needed to stay, to direct emergency
operation, ok, say so. But her response was
stupid.

[Anonymous]

Is the big SUV dying?

Sport-utility sales nosedive in September in the face of $3-a-gallon-gas, with giants like the Ford Expedition, Chevy Suburban and Toyota Sequoia falling hardest.

Sales of sport-utility vehicles took a dive in September, dragging down U.S. automakers who were already expecting a consumer payback after a summer of employee-pricing discounts. Gas prices that topped $3 nationwide after Hurricane Katrina didn?t help.
[Cry them a bucket. How long have they known this was coming?]

The damage:

Sales of the perennial best-selling SUV, the Ford Explorer, dropped by 58% compared with September 2004. Its larger kin, the Ford Expedition, which gets 14 mpg in city driving, saw sales drop 61%. Ford stopped producing its even larger SUV, the Excursion, last month.

GM?s full-size SUVs, due to be replaced with more fuel-efficient models next year, fell 56%. Sales of its Hummer H2 ? so heavy it doesn?t fall under the EPA?s fuel-mileage ratings system -- were off by 31%, but the brand?s smaller new SUV, the H3, is off to a brisk start. It?s rated at 16 mpg in city driving.

Toyota moved 46% fewer of its immense Sequoia sport-utilities, rated at 15 mpg city, and sales of its smaller SUVs were off sharply as well. Sales of Honda?s largest SUV, the Pilot, fell 26%. Nissan sold 20% fewer of its 13-mpg Armadas.
 
The upshot? Overall General Motors sales were down 24% from last year; Ford?s by 20%. Both companies said their hugely successful employee-discount programs pulled ahead fall sales into July and August. Asian brands, which didn?t offer employee discounts, felt less pain, mainly because they had a wider selection of small cars to fill the gap.

Whether the September sales shift represents a sea change in consumer habits is still unknown. While Toyota, Honda and Ford are selling every hybrid-electric vehicle they can make, sales of full-size SUVs still dwarf that output.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/inv ... p?GT1=7159

[Anonymous]

Posted on Sat, Oct. 22, 2005
Evacuation claimed more lives than Rita
By R.A. DYER and AMAN BATHEJA
Star-Telegram Staff Writers
Excerpt:
Nearly two-thirds of the more than 125 Texans who died as a result of Hurricane Rita lost their lives during the huge problem-plagued evacuation before the storm came ashore Sept. 24, a "Star-Telegram? investigation has found.

The mandatory evacuation snarled traffic for days along major highways leading from Houston and Galveston. The"Star-Telegram? survey found that at least 88 Texans died during the exodus, putting the evacuation alone on par with some of the deadliest disasters in Texas history.

Overall, county officials in Texas attributed 126-141 deaths to Hurricane Rita, including four directly associated with the Category 3 storm. The disparity in the numbers is due to imprecise or contradictory counts by officials in some counties.

State officials, though, still cannot say for sure how many people died because of the storm. The Texas Department of State Health Services has counted 43 fatalities so far, but a final tally won?t be ready for weeks, an official there said.

The evacuation resulted in more fatalities than all but the deadliest of Texas disasters. For instance, more than twice as many Texans died in the evacuation as in the devastating Wichita Falls tornados of 1979.

It may have been safer for Texans to stay put in Southeast Texas than to leave.

But the mandatory evacuation still made sense, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry said.

"At the time that local officials ordered the evacuation, Texas was facing a worst-case scenario of a Category 5 storm hurricane heading up the Houston Ship Channel,? spokeswoman Kathy Walt said. "All the modeling done by the experts indicated that what would have happened, without a large-scale evacuation, is that Texas would have faced over a million people killed or seriously injured.?

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/12971858.htm