Family and Friends Evacuation Details

I have heard from several of my friends that I attended A&M with and it sounds like everyone's parents and families are safely evacuated. My parents are still in the process but they are taking surface roads through town and are progressing out of Houston rather quickly considering the volume of people leaving. They officially scrapped their plan to get to Lafayette since my brother and his girlfriend might be leaving there this afternoon. My parents are now making the trek to College Station to stay with Travis and Danielle. Meanwhile, I spoke to Danielle's dad this morning and they are going to stay put in The Woodlands after evacuating Danielle's grandmother and aunt from Friendswood and Port Arthur respectively. Also my aunt, uncle and cousin who only recently moved to The Woodlands decided to leave at 4:00 AM this morning and arrived at my dad's friend Don's house in Dripping Springs near Austin at 9:00 AM.

I heard from Mike who said that Jennifer's parents got to Georgetown this morning from Orange at 4:30 AM after driving since 8:15 PM last night. That's a distance of 290 miles in about 8 hours or 36 miles per hour. Mike's father in law said that all the gas stations in south Texas are out of fuel so they drove the end of their trip on fumes. Mike's sister and brother-in-law arrived in Georgetown at 5:30 AM after leaving Pearland at 4:00 pm yesterday. That's 200 miles in 13.5 hours or 15 miles per hour. Finally, the longest evacuation I've heard of so far was Joel's sister's family. Their 270 mile drive from Clear Lake to Dallas took 19 hours or 14 miles per hour.

The good news is that everyone is getting to higher, safer ground. Even if the storm weakens before making landfall, it is good to just get out of the way, let Mother Nature do her thing and then try to get back to normalcy as soon as possible.