Hurricane Gridlock - Solutions?

The National Weather Service and state officials carefully monitored the hurricane as it moved west reaching "Category 5" status. Thankfully, adequate warnings were issued to save lives and property along the coast and inland. With recent memories of Hurricane Katrina on their minds, Gulf Coast residents readily responded to evacuation orders. Families gathered their belongings and hit the highways on Wednesday, September 21.

However, there were several serious problems with the evacuation. Departing within hours of one another, hundreds of thousands of fleeing motorists found themselves gridlocked in traffic. Horror stories abound of evacuees—including elderly people, medical patients, and young children—stuck in cars that could move only a few miles in eight or ten hours. Some evacuees remained in their cars for 20 hours or more. Gridlock frustration caused thousands anxiety, and almost panic, as many eventually found themselves without food, water or fuel.

Many of us, watching on television, saw four lanes of gridlocked northbound traffic stalled on Interstate 45, while several lanes of westbound traffic sat idle on Interstate 10. I commented to my friends, "How insane!" We could see four almost-empty southbound lanes, unused yet available as a solution to the crowding on I-45. Why the delay to open more traffic lanes?

When millions are trying to evacuate a city in a genuine emergency, the authorities ought to use every resource at their disposal. The solution came Thursday morning, hours after the evacuation began and many were stranded. The Texas Department of Transportation finally activated "contraflow"—opening the vacant southbound lanes to the stalled northbound traffic. With all lanes open in the northbound and westbound directions from Houston, the flow of traffic reached normalcy by Friday noon, more than 24 hours later than it should have taken.

A Knight-Ridder News Service article by reporters Gordon Dickson and John Moritz quoted one highway expert's comment that "planners must not have anticipated such a large number of people trying to evacuate at once." Incredible! To its credit, "The Texas Department of Transportation sent a fleet of about a dozen trucks to patrol evacuation routes for people who needed fuel… In all, the agency had helped 5,000 stranded motorists by Friday morning" (Ibid.)

What is the solution for moving millions of evacuees? The ancient nation of Israel, estimated between two to five million, was on the move in the Sinai Peninsula. The Bible describes an orderly exodus, organized by tribes—the twelve tribes of Israel. When they camped, the population was arrayed in a square pattern—three tribes on each side of the square—with the tabernacle set up in the middle. When the nation struck its tents and moved, each tribe took its turn in joining the march to another location. The tribe of Judah set out first. The book of Numbers describes the process: "All who were numbered according to their armies of the forces with Judah, one hundred and eighty-six thousand four hundred—these shall break camp first" (Numbers 2:9). The last tribe joining the march was Naphtali: "And over the army of the tribe of the children of Naphtali was Ahira the son of Enan. Thus was the order of march of the children of Israel, according to their armies, when they began their journey" (Numbers 10:27-28). Instead of chaos, millions of people moved according to an orderly plan.

Texas, or any other state for that matter, can plan for the orderly evacuation of millions, simply by scheduling departures by communities or zip codes over a period of 36 to 48 hours. Will people cooperate? They certainly responded to evacuation orders this time. Yet a horrible gridlock resulted when millions of Rita refugees headed for the highways at almost the same time. In a future catastrophic situation requiring evacuation, we know that people would love to avoid the chaos and gridlock that Rita refugees experienced.

In his press conference Saturday morning, September 24, Texas Governor Rick Perry urged evacuees to stay put and avoid returning to their home communities until the infrastructure is safe. He announced a return plan that reflects the biblical organizational strategy. Governor Perry stated that the state plans to "stagger the return of evacuees." Had that strategy been employed in the first place, it would have prevented the gridlock that halted the massive flow of refugees out of Galveston and Houston. State and city planners could have assigned communities to evacuate according to a schedule that would have avoided hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, and vans accessing freeways all at the same general time.

Biblical prophecy reveals that more disasters are coming. Will we be prepared? Just before the prophesied Great Tribulation, described in Matthew 24, true Christians will follow the instructions of Jesus: "Therefore when you see the 'abomination of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place '(whoever reads, let him understand),' then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains" (vv. 15-16). There will be an end-time exodus just as there was in the first century. Jesus went on to say, "And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened" (Matthew 24:20-22).

Katrina and Rita refugees already know what it is like to "flee." Now is the time to prepare and to pray for safe evacuations in the future. Pray for authorities and planners to give our populations the best solutions possible. And pray for our Western nations to repent of their immorality and godless ways. Almighty God may yet bless our nations if we change our attitudes and behaviors. But in the meantime, we must prepare ourselves physically and spiritually for more disasters.