Mexico Medical Student |

Raul is stuck on what his wife Kris called “the I-10 parking lot.” Like so many people right now as I type, they are forced to not run the A/C in 100+ degree weather (the inside cabin temp read 106 when I called) to avoid as much as possible not running out of gas, since there’s practically no more to be had. I would have said “I told you to leave at 3AM!” (such a loving cousin I am >:D ) except that there was a guy on the news who left downtown at 4AM and had barely made it to Beltway 8 as of 12:00pm, about a 12 mile drive. Granted, that was on I-45 going to Dallas, except that now the hurricane has taken a more easterly turn.

This isn’t New Orleans, much less rural Mississippi: this is the 4th largest city in the US, added to the peripheral populations of Galveston, Seabrook, Clear Lake, Texas City, Freeport, etc. etc. — I estimate 5 million people all told, many of whom are on outbound highways. I just hope as many people as possible get out–Texas Dept of Transportation (TxDOT) has a massive job mitigating those kinds of numbers along with necessary advance inbound traffic of food/supplies/materials, etc, so both sides of I-10/I-45 can’t be opened haphazardly. Let’s not forget I-10 is one of the top 3 most traveled interstates in the US.

Yes, I miss home, I miss the “action,” as I said earlier, but not this action. Regardless of where this storm strikes, I hope that the hard lessons learned from Katrina continue to pay off. Good luck to everyone.