illusioned.org - hesam panahi

I’m completely shocked.

The last two days have been insane here in the Houston area. Paranoia has descended on the city.. last night it was estimated that it would take 16 hours to go to San Antonio (normally a three hour drive), 7 hours to College Station (a 90 minute drive).

Gas stations in and around the city are completely out of gas. Thousands of motorists are stranded on the side of the freeways with no gas left in their vehicles. The cell phone networks have been jammed, resulting in ten minutes worth of redialing at times just to reach someone.

The freeways were so packed earlier today that, for the first time ever in the history of Texas, TxDOT converted the contraflow lanes (in other words, the inbound lanes) on two major freeways (I-45 and I-10) into outbound lanes.

As Gareth alluded to earlier, even Whataburger is closed! Every fast food place is out of food - every grocery store is out of supplies - every ATM is out of cash.

Lina has been in the car for the last fourteen hours and they’ve driven less than 60 miles.

As for me - I’ll be staying home. Originally my family planned to go to Odessa (550+ miles away - apparently we have “family” there), but after seeing the traffic situation we changed our plan. The fact that the storm has inched a bit to the east influenced us as well.

In about 24 hours or so we’ll be seeing the effects of Rita. Hopefully we’ll make it through okay. Expect an update soon (if not, call the po-po-po to come rescue me).