Quote:
Originally Posted by masraum
What are the evacuations like?
After Katrina, "they" were predicting that Rita was going to be a direct hit on Houston, so we evacuated, along with every other person in the Houston metro area. We went to my parents' place in the panhandle of FL. It normally took us 8-9 hours to drive to my parents' place when on vacation with stops for gas, food, etc.... It took us 16-17 hours to get to my parents place, and the first 8 hours of that was to get from our house to the east edge of Houston on I10.
I know that there were folks that spent ~24 hours getting to the Dallas area which is a 4-5 hour drive under normal circumstances.
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Surprisingly, SLT seems to have evacuated pretty smoothly. As far as I can tell.
There was only one road out, Hwy 50 E through Stateline and then up around the east side of the lake, from whence you had to go east to Reno or north through Truckee. Hwy 50 W was closed by the fire, Hwy 89 N around the west side of the lake was closed, I think the Hwy 89 S / Hwy 88 W route was closed or at least very discouraged as the fire was very close to it.
There were apparently epic traffic backups, 5+ miles long, on Hwy 50 E, for much of yesterday. But by the evening, media reports and traffic cameras showed the road completely empty. So bravo to SLT folks - I assume the tourists, second-home'ers had already left by then, so the permanent residents were able to leave in non-disastrous manner. Mass shelters have opened in Carson City and Reno.
The Nevada side of the lake is starting to issue evacuation notices and warnings. That is far fewer people than SLT so I think it should go pretty smoothly.