General Interest > Let's talk about the weather...
Rita: anyone in harm's way?
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
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