Wyntersprite

No matter how great a drainage system is, it all has to empty out somewhere and when there is 50+ inches of rain water falling down on one place, there is nothing that can be done but watch it rise up. They did manually lower some levees but again, where does that empty out too? No we are not "ignorant" but I am also bowing out of this as well because the more I read about how stupid we are for staying the angrier I get because unless you lived through what we have you have NO right to calls us stupid or in your terms ignorant! Enjoy your glass houses.

OK for those naysayers screaming about people refusing to leave their homes and how stupid they are.... For starters we remember the "Evacuation from hell". I was 8 and a half months pregnant going from Houston to Dallas, a trip mind you that would have taken about 4 hours. Took us nearly 26 hours. I could get out and walk faster than the cars were going. I watched as an explosion killed many senior citizens who were forced to leave because of a hurricane that let me remind you, never even hit us! I was watching as people had to leave their dead pets out on the sides of the roads because of the heat, you could not turn the AC on high enough to combat the Texas heat plus the amount of heat built up on the roads from all the sitting cars. Even after the counterflow lanes had been opened. Grocery stores, restaurants (fast food and others), gas stations all closed and boarded up because they had ether sold out or fear from what happened with New Orleans would happen again, because that is what they were saying on the news. That is just a fraction of what we went through in the "Evacuation from Hell". Now we sit and watch a Cat 4 Hurricane hit a small town of Rockport Texas and all our breaths are held and hearts stop. We pray that it won't be that bad, but many had time to get out. However those that stayed behind had stayed because yes some had no money to leave, some had lived in those homes since they were young. Others could not leave their pets behind because many shelters do not allow animals. Others still look around at the many things that in their minds, are not replaceable and decide that maybe they can ride out the storm. It is also so much easier to evacuate a town as small as Rockport or Corpus Christi. But Houston which is a city of 2.303 MILLION people, there is no way. There would be more dead on the roads then had died in the floods. But what you must realize about Texans is that when there is something horrific like this, we band together, we are strong. If you notice as soon as things got really bad in Houston, the people with boats and high profile trucks came out and risked their own lives to help those who did not have time to leave their homes. Remember no one could have seen this coming, many reporters are calling this the Thousand Year Flood because it was so biblical. You only see what the reporters want you to see. I was here, I lived it. I hear the choppers flying overhead for the past three days as they try and get as many people to safety. No one knew that we would flood this bad. Places that do not flood flooded. It got so bad that they had to manually release waters from different levees and drain into an already flooded Bayou. So yes many stayed behind because we had the thinking "Our neighborhood is safe." Yes we were wrong for thinking that, but when we realized that we would be getting 50+ inches of water, how are you going to get out? Shelters can only take in so many people before being turned away. People do not want to leave their pets and I am one of those. If you do not take me and my dog and m bird then I am staying and riding it out. That is what we did with Ike and that had us out of power for 14 days and clean up from hell. So before you start judging and casting those stones, think about what we had to go through in the past. Think about the millions of people that are suppose to be evacuated and tell me this. Where are we supposed to go when we can't even get out of our streets.