GALVESTON, Texas — Maya Hart's hand stung as she gripped her Dodge Ram's stick shift. She winced in pain and slammed on the brakes — a routine the 45-year-old mother had mastered in the 24 hours since she and her family began driving north from Galveston Island. She looked in the rearview mirror to steal a glance at her daughters and grandson, who sat baking in the Texas heat in a car of their own.
It was mid-September 2005 and Hurricane Rita was rapidly closing in on the Texas coast. A barrage of alarming news reports, paired with a dearth of directives from disaster management agencies, had created a wave of collective terror. Rita was already the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Gulf of Mexico, known for supercharging hurricanes with its warm, flat waters. Nobody wanted to suffer a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, which had ravaged the Gulf Coast just weeks before.
"It was all the hype on television," Hart, now 65, told Public Health Watch. "Repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, this doomsday scenario. People were panicking, thinking of Katrina. The roads just swelled up."
Hart didn't know it at the time, but she was caught in one of the largest — and arguably worst-executed — mass evacuations in American history. In a span of four days, more than 3.5 million Southeast Texas residents swarmed the roads, creating bumper-to-bumper traffic that spanned miles, clogging highways and city streets. Even inland communities north of Houston had begun evacuating in fear of a far-reaching storm, leaving residents from the most hurricane-vulnerable communities like Galveston stuck behind a growing tide of cars.
As the hours passed, stalled drivers began to worry that the storm would hit them then and there, with nowhere to go and no shelter to seek. Others ran out of gas, food and water, leaving them exposed to the suffocating Texas elements. Tensions rose and some people began fighting. Many suffered — and even died — from heat-stroke and dehydration. A bus carrying residents of a nursing home caught fire and exploded, killing 24 of its elderly passengers. In total, 107 people died during Hurricane Rita's evacuation, far more than the six Texans killed by the actual storm.
Hart and her family eventually followed another car into a subdivision near Lumberton, 90 miles northeast of Galveston. Hart had known to pack extra gas, food and camping gear for the trip, but they still had to sleep overnight on the side of the road. Her daughter, overcome by fear and exhaustion, had a panic attack. The scorching temperatures and prolonged idling had cooked Hart's truck, rendering it undrivable.
Then, suddenly, Rita changed her path. The Category 5 hurricane, which had originally been headed for Galveston, took a right-hand turn and missed the island entirely. Hart was incredulous.
"There we were, having driven all this way," Hart said, "and the hurricane just switched directions. Now what?"
Two decades have passed since the Hurricane Rita debacle, but many questions about the Texas Gulf Coast's storm preparedness remain. Summer after summer, Galveston residents watch hurricanes spiral across the Atlantic Ocean, threatening their lives, their homes and their communities. For them, it feels like a matter of when, not if, the next major hurricane strikes the island. Whether evacuation protocols are ready for that scenario, however, is unclear.
Local authorities and emergency responders, wary of inciting mass hysteria, face dilemmas regarding when and how to communicate the potential dangers posed by storms. Determining if an evacuation is needed has only become more difficult as warming weather fueled by climate change creates stronger, more erratic storms that are harder to understand and forecast. Residents must quickly make life-or-death decisions about whether to stay with their most precious possessions or leave everything behind — a dilemma complicated by the prospect of storm winds changing course, as they did during Rita.
Galveston is largely unprotected from the next great storm. Its best chance against a catastrophic weather event is the "Ike Dike," a nearly $35 billion system of barriers, gates and dunes along the Southeast Texas coast. But the Gulf Coast Protection District, which is overseeing the dike's construction, says the project is still 20 to 30 years from completion. For now, the priority is to protect coastline residents using the limited tools available, said Brian Murray, deputy emergency management coordinator for Harris County.
"I'd like to think we're going to have a more organized experience than before," Murray said. "But ultimately, the factors that are really important are this: Are officials making evacuation calls in a timely manner? Is everyone on the same page? Are people actually going to evacuate at the time they are being told … it's going to be impossible to predict."
Rita's aftermath
The groundwork for the disaster had been laid long before Hurricane Rita made landfall in 2005. Houston had absorbed more than 200,000 evacuees who had fled New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Emergency response officials and coastal residents were on high alert, wary of the survival stories they'd heard from their new friends and neighbors.
But that fear didn't translate to readiness. Officials along the Texas coast had no idea what an evacuation would look like. Local governments didn't have evacuation maps, let alone coordinated plans. They hadn't even established evacuation zones, which are fundamental for ensuring large masses of residents leave their homes in as orderly a fashion as possible. Prioritizing which groups — typically the communities closest to the coast — get to leave first is among these zones' most critical functions. Without specific zones in place, a mass evacuation can devolve into a desperate stampede of people fleeing for safety, which is exactly what happened with Rita.
The region's lack of planning went far deeper than that. Little coordination existed between counties and cities. Instead, municipalities focused on their own residents, with little consideration of how other communities were reacting. Emergency response officials also failed to consider the impacts of factors like impending gas shortages and the summer heat's effect on evacuating residents, said Francis Rodriguez, the principal program coordinator for incident management at the Houston-Galveston Area Council, or H-GAC.
Additionally, evacuees didn't know which escape routes were open and which weren't. Many unwittingly drove into roads that had been blocked off, costing them precious time and fuel. Many had no clue about where they were going and when the traffic would end.
"What happened with Hurricane Rita was eye-opening for us," Rodriguez said. "That is what allowed all the management partners to realize that we really need to get a regionally coordinated effort in place. That's not just everyone having evacuation plans, but truly a regional effort."
In response, H-GAC, along with the thirteen counties the agency represents, created two maps — one for evacuation zones and one for evacuation routes. That way officials could better understand when residents from each area were evacuating and coordinate with other jurisdictions.
Prior to this, H-GAC, which existed decades before Rita hit, had no formal role in evacuations. The programs H-GAC administers are "a reflection of the federal funding" the organization receives, Rodriguez said. The regional evacuation effect came from funding allocated by the Federal Highway Administration.
The map of evacuation zones is grouped by ZIP code. The map of evacuation routes consists of highlighted directions from Galveston County to Walker County heading north, northeast and northwest from the coast. H-GAC revisits the maps every year with approval from the counties it serves and the cities within its jurisdiction, along with Texas Department of Transportation and Texas Division of Emergency Management. Just in the last few years, the organization added two new evacuation routes to the maps: a segment of Texas State Highway 146, which runs north-south, and Highway 87 on the Bolivar Peninsula, just east of Galveston Island. However, there has only ever been one route out of Galveston on Interstate 45, which then divides into State Highway 6 and State Highway 146 just north of the island.
Plenty of uncertainty remains despite H-GAC's efforts. That's because no one really knows what it will look like to use these tools during a real-life emergency, Rodriguez said. There hasn't been a need to call for a mass evacuation since the updates. Smaller evacuations occurred during hurricanes Ike in 2008 and Harvey in 2017.
"Evacuations bring a lot of unknowns," said Jesse Ryholt, emergency management coordinator for Galveston County. "In terms of making a [mass] evacuation decision, it would really, really take a lot for us to make that call."
Although Texas has just over $14 billion in disaster recovery and mitigation funds, it leaves potential evacuation decisions entirely up to local authorities. That leaves unincorporated communities, like those on the Bolivar Peninsula in Galveston County, particularly vulnerable since there are no local governments or emergency management services.
Galveston County Judge Mark Henry has the power to call for a county-wide evacuation, but that's unlikely because city municipalities typically call for their own evacuations during storms. Even during Rita, Jim Yarbrough, the county judge at the time, didn't call for a county-wide evacuation. Storm management in Texas automatically falls to local decision makers before moving up to the county or region, Ryholt said.
"It would take a lot for the judge to call for an evacuation," he said. "A worst-case scenario."
Local governments won't be entirely on their own, should a worst-case scenario occur. If cities need resources, such as boats or emergency crews, their officials can reach out to the county for aid. If more critical services are required, the state and federal governments can intervene with everything from providing fuel for cars to helicopter rescues. A big enough storm could draw in the Texas Department of Public Safety or the National Guard, Ryholt said.
But disaster specialists like Laura Norman, the emergency management coordinator for the city of Galveston, don't plan to wait for help if disaster strikes. Every summer, emergency managers train and prepare for any kind of hurricane or tropical storm — before, during and after the event. These exercises include practice drills with bus evacuations, worst-case-scenario projections and run-throughs at the region's emergency headquarters just north of Galveston, in Dickinson. When Tropical Storm Bertha made landfall in Louisiana in late July, Norman was pulled into back-to-back meetings and calls. She has to stay ready for anything and everything.
Above all else, Norman preaches preparedness.
"What we've learned over the decades has been that people will make the right decisions if they have good information," she said. "Most people want to protect their family. Most folks want to take care of their property and themselves. As emergency managers, we're giving them information and access to accurate information where they can make their own decisions."
Communicating risks in a changing climate
Storm prediction technology has improved considerably since Hurricane Rita. Thanks to next-generation satellites, artificial intelligence and updated modeling, national and local meteorologists are better equipped to predict and prepare for weather events. Climate experts have a greater understanding of the possible paths storms can take, also known as the hurricane cone.
"We've come a long way in terms of things like the products that the National Hurricane Center provides and the hurricane cone," said Justin Gonzalez, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in the Houston and Galveston area. "The models have improved in their ability to predict the intensity or possible path of the storm."
This gives experts access to information that is much more concise and accurate, which can then be shared with residents. Possessing these clearer, easier-to-communicate forecasts can make a huge difference for communities facing potentially life-or-death scenarios.
But deciding which information to share — and how to share it — can be daunting for emergency departments. Providing real-time information and expert advice to people during a threat is one of the most important elements of any evacuation, said David Abramson, director of New York University's Center for Public Health Disaster Science. It's also one of the most precarious.
If officials use language that is too inflammatory, they risk overstating the dangers posed by the event at hand. If residents feel like the risks were exaggerated in a particular instance, they are less likely to follow them the next time. But if an event is underplayed, Abramson said, "there's obviously an enormous consequence if people don't evacuate a dangerous situation. The risk communication itself becomes a challenge."
That challenge has become exponentially more difficult as hurricanes have become less predictable. Scientists have found that major storms, like Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, are more likely to hit the Gulf Coast due to climate change. These storms have also become more volatile, due to a process called rapid intensification. A storm that enters the Gulf as a Category 1 can increase to a Category 4 in a matter of hours.
"Most hurricane plans are created on the idea that we have 120 hours from the time the storm crosses into the Gulf of Mexico before potential landfall," Murray, Harris County's deputy emergency management coordinator, said. "Now, we are trying to put our plans in the context of how do we do this in 60 hours instead of 120?"
Murray's job may be getting harder, too. The Trump Administration's severe cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's, or FEMA's, and the National Weather Service's budgets have stripped the agencies of employees, reduced operations and terminated research programs. Experts worry these issues could weaken the precision of forecasts and lead to calls for larger, unnecessary evacuations. For example, a lack of precise data could spur emergency officials to evacuate all of Galveston County, rather than evacuating just the city of Galveston. At best, such a mix-up could weaken public trust in disaster management networks. At worst, it could create widespread panic which, as happened with Rita, stalls roadways and impedes evacuees from reaching safety.
But no matter what, emergency coordinators try to state a storm's threat as clearly as possible for residents — sometimes in the gravest of terms. During Hurricane Rita, then-Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco recommended that residents who chose to stay behind in mandatory evacuation zones write their social security number on their arms with indelible marker so they can identify the body. Unlike during voluntary evacuations, emergency responders may not rescue a resident who stays during a mandatory one.
"That's, unfortunately, the reality of the situation," Murray said. "At some point, no one's coming to help you. We're not going to risk the life of a first responder to save somebody who decided not to evacuate."
But no matter the hours, the risk communication or the severity of the storm, residents can still refuse to leave. This is not lost on Norman and her emergency management team in Galveston. To raise awareness about the seriousness of storms, they reach out to schools, community centers, houses of faith, outreach events and work with local organizations like St. Vincent DePaul and the Salvation Army.
But there's only so much they can do, Norman said, especially with how much fake information is posted on social media — a problem that's only worsening with the rise of artificial intelligence. During Tropical Storm Bertha in July, Norman saw a number of graphics and videos bearing false data shared by murky sources.
"We just want to make sure that people have access to the correct information," Norman said. "We can't control what decisions that they make. So we build relationships year round and try to make sure we're getting people the information they need."
Liz Pouncy, a Galvestonian who used to work for the county jail, said she would evacuate if necessary, especially for a Category 3 or higher. She's been around long enough to see how Galveston looks during a storm. Her home –— which belonged to her grandmother before her — was put on stilts in 2014 to safeguard against flooding. Houses down the street from Pouncy's still sit in tatters from past storms. Some are under construction. Many have been abandoned.
Pouncy keeps a three-ring binder of all her family's important documents, such as birth certificates and social security cards. She holds it close to her during storms and plans to take it with her, should she ever have to evacuate.
"Me? I'm used to it," she said.
To stay or go
Evacuation isn't easy for residents of coastal communities like Galveston, even if they've lived there for years. What Chris Jones, now 37, remembers most about Hurricane Rita was his grandfather's oxygen tank. They evacuated with an extra tank, but he still struggled to breathe on the road. The stress was overwhelming.
Jones took a long pause when asked if he'd evacuate again.
"It depends," he told Public Health Watch. "Sometimes it's like the evacuation is just as bad as the storm."
Jones is not alone in his thinking. The decision to evacuate is hardly the same for everyone, Abramson, of New York University, said. After Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana in 2008, he calculated how much it would cost for the average Gulf Coast resident to evacuate for a week. At the time, it was $500 — about $775 today with inflation.
"We can't ignore the practical aspects of evacuation and the coast and the capacity to evacuate," Abramson said. "For a lot of us, ($500) is not so bad, but for the many people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, they don't have that kind of money. It could come down to the time of the month the evacuation order is coming. Have they already spent through their benefit check? Can they afford to bring food with them?"
Some residents don't have cars and depend fully on public transportation. Others have family they care for or jobs they can't leave without risking a paycheck or being fired. Liz Pouncy evacuated during Rita, but had to stay behind at the Galveston County Jail to watch the inmates during Ike.
Ken Diestler, who owned a veterinary clinic in Galveston during Rita, stayed with the animals under his care until the last minute. A few of his most dedicated employees joined him.
"We got most of the animals out," Diestler said. "But we always have unhomed dogs and some self-interested people who, the day before the storm, drop their dogs off. So, there's a killer storm coming and you're dumping your dogs on me and I'm supposed to stay and die with them?"
To aid its most vulnerable residents, the city of Galveston and Galveston County promote an online database called the State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry, or STEAR. Residents can register to provide local emergency planners and responders with their contact information so they're not forgotten during hurricanes and other disasters. First responders can see who needs transportation, who is dependent on diabetes medication, who needs medical equipment like an oxygen tank and who may not be able to evacuate at all.
With this in mind, Ryholt, Galveston County's emergency management coordinator, created a program that allows the county's emergency departments to coordinate with state and local partners to take people on the STEAR list by bus to an evacuation hub in Texas City. From there, residents are put on another bus and sent off to safer regions.
This plan has limits, of course. The STEAR database is entirely voluntary and, despite efforts from Ryholt's team to raise awareness about the list, residents may not know to sign up. Others may be leery of signing up at all. This is especially a concern for undocumented immigrants, Abramson said. At the hub in Texas City, residents are required to register to keep things organized and keep families together.
Perhaps the biggest factor for potential evacuees — one disaster experts can't account for — is the role that family dynamics plays.
"A lot of times the reasons that people evacuate or did not evacuate had less to do with evacuation orders and more to do with what my neighbors are doing and what my family and my friends are doing," Abramson said. "People will stay behind if they hear that they've got one member of the family who refuses to go…all of sudden it becomes a collective decision."
The opposite happened in Maya Hart's case during Hurricane Rita. She hadn't planned to leave Galveston until her daughter and grandson showed up at her house the morning of the storm and pleaded with her to go. Her motherly instincts kicked in, and she agreed.
Looking ahead, Hart says, she'd still evacuate if her life depended on it. But she'll never move away from Galveston, no matter the risks.
"Galvestonians are resilient," Hart said. "We have a history, a long history of survival on this island and rebuilding and rebranding."
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