A Year Ago Today, The Rita Panic Set In
A year ago today, my wife and I made the fateful decision that she and the two boys should evacuate to DeRidder, La., to get out of Hurricane Rita's projected path.
At the time, the projected path tracked farther south, between Houston and Corpus Christi, but we were well within that probability cone.
So about midday, they took off to a friend's house in DeRidder, making the drive in about 90 minutes.
Later that day, the drive for panicked evacuees would take hours and hours as Hurricane Rita ramped herself up to a Category 5 city killer.
I had to stay behind, coordinating the news coverage of the vehicular highway stranglehold as well as the frightening meteorological buzz saw approaching from the south.
I remember being excited, knowing this could be a HUGE news story, most likely the biggest of my career, and also afraid, worried about my family, my newspaper staff and whether this old Beaumont Enterprise building would be able to take the pounding if the storm came straight at us.
Like my wife, my parents in Houston wisely got out early, breezing over to San Antonio, while my sister and her family got caught up in the madness and subsequently took two days to join Mom and Dad.
I remember coming home to a quiet house, in a quite neighborhood, that night and trying in futility to get a good night's sleep.
No one knew where the storm would strike. No one knew what to expect.
And sometime during the night, Rita's alarming turn toward Southeast Texas began.
At the time, the projected path tracked farther south, between Houston and Corpus Christi, but we were well within that probability cone.
So about midday, they took off to a friend's house in DeRidder, making the drive in about 90 minutes.
Later that day, the drive for panicked evacuees would take hours and hours as Hurricane Rita ramped herself up to a Category 5 city killer.
I had to stay behind, coordinating the news coverage of the vehicular highway stranglehold as well as the frightening meteorological buzz saw approaching from the south.
I remember being excited, knowing this could be a HUGE news story, most likely the biggest of my career, and also afraid, worried about my family, my newspaper staff and whether this old Beaumont Enterprise building would be able to take the pounding if the storm came straight at us.
Like my wife, my parents in Houston wisely got out early, breezing over to San Antonio, while my sister and her family got caught up in the madness and subsequently took two days to join Mom and Dad.
I remember coming home to a quiet house, in a quite neighborhood, that night and trying in futility to get a good night's sleep.
No one knew where the storm would strike. No one knew what to expect.
And sometime during the night, Rita's alarming turn toward Southeast Texas began.
posted by Brian Pearson at 9:31 AM
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