LS1M

iTrader: (3)

http://www.ls1m.com/Hurricane%20Rita%202005.htm

worst traffic jam of all time...
Glad to be home & have electricity finally


-Mark

TAQuickness

iTrader: (28)

LMAO - I witnessed a 37 mile bumper to bumper not going anywhere traffic jam on BW8 headed towards I-10 last week. I went home boarded up and that's all she wrote!

EDALVA21

I stayed home. Glad I didnt have to go thru all that!! Also glad that I didnt even get 2 in. of rain at my house. I live near 610s and 45 s. Who would of thought of that!!! lol.

jawsk2

Here's some pics of 45 by NASA 1 on Friday. Pretty much the opposite!!
Also, a couple of pics of an apartment building on El Dorado that burned down on Friday night during the wind (can't really call it a storm).
The fire scared the CRAP out of me. I live downwind of it, and woke up in the pitch black, no power, and smelled smoke!!!! I hauled *** and ran around my condo building looking for the fire, and found it across El Dorado. The wind was so strong it was pushing the thick smoke straight into my complex.
I video'd the fire, but don't know how to upload it.

JackZ28

That sucks, but I guess it was better to go through all of that and play it safe. I just stayed at home once they lowered it to a CAT III.

LS1M

iTrader: (3)

One of those apartments belongs to a friend of mine. I think his is the one on the left in your last picture. He's a DJ and had *thousands* of vinyl LP's in there. Fortunately, he wasn't home at the time. We're starting to think there's an arsonist in the area. That apartment complex has burnt twice now, plus there were a couple of fires across the street, and the Firestone on the corner burned to the studs a couple of months ago. I got to be the guy to call 911 on the firestone - noticed smoke right after church, which is right next door. Too bad they moved the fire house right before all this stuff started burning.

jawsk2

They are rebuilding the firehouse, but yeah, bad timing.
I really hope your friend had insurance, because that's horrible to lose everything; very glad he wasn't home. A firefighter I know said it's being investigated for arson. I was figuring the Firestone might have been torched by the owners; it's changed hands so many times I thought maybe it wasn't profitable and they tried for insurance, but that's purely my opinion. The apartment that burned on the other side of El Dorado, right by the Jack in the Box was started by an old lady who walked by her drapes with a candle.
I don't know what started the one at El Dorado Way condos.

Ben R

Friday morning would have been the best day to leave.

goober35

iTrader: (1)

that is freaky. I have never seen a high way empty during the day.

NexGen

iTrader: (2)

Crazy, I couldnt even Imagine if the hurricane would've hit houston as a 5!!!

TheBlurLS1

iTrader: (8)

i live in nederland , which is right between (bordering) port arthur on one side and beaumont on the other side. i'm in dallas right now and some people in town have reported back to me that my carport was completly blown off and cannot be located but my back patio cover (built exactly the same and 3 feet away) is totally fine. also heard that both my back patio doors were laying in the middle of my backyard, they were propped back up against the house and braced.

no trees in my house luckily and more lucky is the fact that i dont have 8 feet of water in my bedroom.

my house is about 2 miles away from the neches river (which feeds into sabine lake) and is only 11 feet above sea level. we put our spare car (saturn) on jackstands in the driveway as high as they would go, put the camaro on the second floor of a parking garage, packed up everything worth more than 100 bux, and hauled ***.

we left and headed for the lake, but most of the roads on the "evacuation route" had turned into parking lots. we were able to cut down some seriously sneaky backroads and made it to the lake in only 7 hours (usually takes 2). took my grandparents 14hrs and they were closer than us to begin with. some of the roads we went down were dirt logging roads lol. i swear i was looking at the gas guage every 2 minutes.

evacuating and sitting in lines for ice and gasoline was almost surreal feeling. felt like the end of the world in more ways than one. my nervousness and restless mind made it even worse. the lake house (on toledo bend) sucked after the power went out but we are sitting high and dry in dallas now

rant = off

p.s. - did anybody else go through the same thing?

ACW

Yeah, very surreal. I stayed through the storm and my apartment survived intact... but I left Sunday evening after a couple days without power, since there's such significant damage to the transmission grid and no idea how long it'll take to fix it.

Stang Man

iTrader: (1)

Does anyone know what the smog level looked like those days? Just curious!

Glad everyone made it out ok after all was said and done!

DesertFox

iTrader: (2)

Is it bad that I thought of driving into houston to drive at excessive speeds while the freeways were empty? I mean that is all I could think of when I saw the news showing the traffic " I could be doing 115 in the southbound lanes, and pretty much no one would care". does something sound wrong about that?

Glad to see everyone made it ok.

Josh

LS1M

iTrader: (3)

I thought about that. On Wed we tried to go out I10 & when we turned back home, there was nobody on the road. Could have nailed it for miles if my wife wasn't trying to follow me. Nobody would have cared.

jawsk2

I was in my Tahoe on Egret Bay on Friday morning and was going 95 over the bridge when I saw a DPS cruiser coming at me the other way. Of course, my first instinct was to nail the brakes, but I figured I'd go ahead and get a ticket as a souvenir of the whole crazy time. He didn't even slow down, he was going about as fast the other way. The speed limit is 50 right there. I'm sure he had bigger things to worry about.

TAQuickness

iTrader: (28)

I didn't bother to evacuate... I hit 132 before I caught up with the first car going my direction... life was good for a few days