Hurricane Rita: The 'Forgotten Storm' and its Tragic Evacuation Nightmare

@KRDsonic YouTube · 17/09/2023 · 👍 592

I was 13 at the time and lived in central Houston. My school stayed open for longer than it should have and a couple of my teachers made threats that if we evacuated early and didn't show up to class, we'd get F's on any assignments they would have given for those days. By the time our school actually shut down, traffic had started becoming backed up. I remember my mom and some of our neighbors trying to decide if we should attempt to evacuate or stay home and ride it out. In the end, we decided it was too late to evacuate and so we stayed home and prayed we'd be ok. My mom and I were scared because we had lost everything in Tropical Storm Allison 6 years prior and so we were expecting the worst. We were thankful when Rita missed us in the end. Afterwards, I heard horror stories from a lot of my classmates about how it took them 20+ hours to get out of Houston. Rita was an important lesson in evacuations though. I see a lot of people online calling people stupid if they don't immediately evacuate for a storm, and every time I tell them about Rita and why evacuations are now done the way they are.

@willthornsbury2913 YouTube · 02/10/2024 · 👍 392

My wife and I lived in Katy, TX during Rita. She was 9 months pregnant and when we decided three days prior to the storm to evacuate, it was impossible. No fuel, roads gridlocked, 100+ heat during the day. People were dying on the side of the road in traffic. It was crazy. We ended up covering our windows and just riding out the storm which thankfully for us turned east away from Katy. We still watched transformers explode everywhere in the distance.

@danielwieten8617 YouTube · 08/09/2023 · 👍 610

That is horrific. I had no idea so many people died during the evacuation process. Thank you for covering this.

@grmpEqweer YouTube · 23/04/2024 · 👍 89

I'd like to note: I think part of the reason we were so afraid is because Katrina demonstrated how little the federal government had our collective backs. We saw there was no depending on them.

@grapeshot YouTube · 08/09/2023 · 👍 508

What I remember about this hurricane most is that bus caring elderly evacuees catching on fire and twenty-four of them dying.

@PenguinInguinLodge YouTube · 08/09/2023 · 👍 1035

2005 was the year of the man-made disasters that just so happened to involve hurricanes. The deaths because of the evacuation was man made, the failures of the levees were man made, and the disastrous response after Katrina was man made.

@Colorfulfruitbasket YouTube · 10/09/2023 · 👍 610

The panic behind Rita was so justified. You just had Katrina which at the time was the 2nd strongest hurricane ever in the Gulf at 175mph and 902mb( just slightly behind Camille at 175mp and 900mb) and it just devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi coast. Now they were faced with a even more powerful Hurricane than Katrina and the new strongest hurricane ever in the gulf at 180mph and 895mb. Everyone in the projected path had a very real a justified panic.

@therogueveteran YouTube · 08/09/2023 · 👍 342

I wanna add something. They did use a panic tactic, I remember them saying if you stay, notify your next of kin. The evacuation killed more than the storm did. Go figure.

@douglasw.7864 YouTube · 08/09/2023 · 👍 149

I remember this all too well. My ex-wife and I were part of this evacuation disaster. We lived in League City, and they were predicting that our area was going to get hit very hard. We prepped our apartment the best we could. After being stuck on the interstate for 12 hours barely moving, we managed to turn around and made it back to a ghost town. We caught the edge of Rita and lost power for about a day. Just a month before my ex had lost her Mom in Alabama. 2005 was not a good year for us. Oddly enough, we moved from the area exactly one week before Hurricane Ike hit the region in 2008.

@AA0Z YouTube · 08/09/2023 · 👍 445

I flew into Houston TX days before Rita for the company I was working for to help prepare, ride out the storm in the basement of our plant and start the plant back up. It was very weird walking into the airport as everybody was trying to get out. People were pointing as us like we were crazy. It pushed East of the Houston area and we rode out the storm watching baseball on TV and drinking beer.