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Hurricane Rita

Exodus leads to frustration, tears

By ANITA KUMAR and TAMARA LUSH
Published September 24, 2005

HOUSTON - A three-day exodus from America's fourth-largest city left thousands of people marooned in their cars with no gas and nowhere to go.

They were hot, sleepy and angry.

Signs of the exodus were scattered along Interstate 10 west of Houston. Crumpled bags of Doritos, empty Coke cans and crushed water bottles littered roadsides and rest stops.

Vehicles were pulled over on the shoulder, many abandoned by drivers who ran out of gas. Other motorists waited for someone to help them.

"They kept telling us to get out of Houston," said a frustrated Bill Logan, 49, who was stuck on I-10 about 50 miles west of the city and almost out of gas.

Logan and his girlfriend, 49-year-old Wende Bach, had piled into his red Ford Mustang Wednesday with her pets - a guinea pig, two white mice, four turtles, an iguana and a pit bull named Duke. Godzilla the gecko died on the 25-hour trip.

Logan was wishing he had ignored the officials who urged Houston residents to flee. If he had waited till Friday, he said, he could have gotten out of Houston with ease. Traffic was heavy, but it was moving.

Martin Huertero, 29, and his family spent 12 hours trying to flee Houston, finally running out of gas at a Wal-Mart parking lot 40 miles north of the city.

He and six members of the family - five adults, two children - spent Thursday night in the minivan. Good Samaritans gave them food and water.

They waited in the hot sun for Huertero's brother to arrive from Dallas with gas.

"I'm not going to a shelter, not after what I saw in New Orleans," Huertero said. "I'm scared of what could happen there. In New Orleans, a lot of people were trying to rape kids and things."

The evacuation led to impromptu communities of stranded evacuees. People fed up with driving gathered in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart west of Houston. Scott and Kathy Heaton sat in lawn chairs and sipped water. They left their home near Freeport Wednesday afternoon for Brenham, with no place to stay. After 12 hours, they decided to park their RV and ride out the storm.

"I don't think they were prepared, just like New Orleans," said Mrs. Heaton, 34. "To me, they were still concerned about Katrina evacuees instead of us."

The Red Cross opened 14 shelters near major interstates Thursday night to accommodate stranded motorists. Within two hours, all were filled.

But Red Cross officials refused to broadcast the locations of the shelters, fearing they would be overrun. Instead, they urged people to call a phone number to locate the nearest shelter.

Concerned individuals and churches stepped into the breach.

One man told a radio station he was on Interstate 45 with 20 gallons of extra gas to give to anyone who was stranded.

Thursday night in Cleveland, 45 miles north of Houston, Liberty Christ Fellowship Church took in almost 400 motorists. Volunteers gave them food and shelter. "It was pretty organized for being a spur of the moment thing," said Richard Furlow, a church volunteer.

Friday morning, authorities sent buses to the church to take the stranded motorists to Dallas and Austin. The evacuees left behind their cars and pets, and some people were crying when they left, Furlow said.

"All they wanted was to weather the storm here," he said. "They didn't want to go any farther."

Juan Sandobal, 47, sat with his three children outside a Shell station that had run out of gas hours earlier. They left their home in Texas City, southeast of Houston, Wednesday at 6 p.m. on their way to stay with family in Austin.

They ended up in the Houston area, tired of the traffic and almost out of gas, deciding to look for shelter anywhere they could find it - perhaps even riding out the storm in a nearby car wash.

"They screwed up," said his son, Gabriel, 21, wearing a "Don't Mess with Texas" T-shirt. "Houston knew about this storm. They should have evacuated a long time ago."

[Last modified September 24, 2005, 01:01:06]