Q&A
A few tough hurricane questions for experts to tackle

We asked Southeast Texans for their hurricane questions. You asked and we sought answers from experts who should know. Here's what we learned.

Q: During Hurricane Rita, residents evacuating northbound on U.S. 69 from healthcare facilities were in traffic on buses for more than 15 hours.

Why were they not allowed to transport earlier or given police escort?

Prisoners were given escort and the southbound lanes on U.S. 69 were closed to traffic for them.

Martha Jo Reeves
Administrator, Silsbee
Convalescent Center

A: Early warnings - not police escorts - help hospitals and nursing homes most.

"Typically, hospitals and nursing homes receive a 12-hour notice before we call for a mandatory evacuation," Jefferson County Emergency Management Coordinator John Cascio said. "A police escort wouldn't have helped because the police wouldn't have been able to relieve that traffic anyway."

While police escorted prison buses for security reasons, inmates got no special treatment during the Hurricane Rita evacuation.

"Our buses were stuck in traffic along with everyone else," said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons in Huntsville. "We didn't have special access to the roads."

Licensed TDCJ lawmen escorted the prison buses as guards, she said, but they were powerless against the gridlock.
Gov. Rick Perry has appointed a task force of Gulf Coast elected officials to examine the state's evacuation plan and come up with solutions to the maddening "Texodus" traffic.

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Q: If your home is still "tarped" and a hurricane blows through, what can you do to increase the probability that there will be something worth returning home to afterwards? And if you're insured and your house is still "tarped," what will the insurance companies do about any new damage?

Carol Tompkins
Beaumont

A: Take your valuables to safe place if a storm gets loose in the Gulf again, said Sandra Ray, spokeswoman for the Southwest Insurance Information Service, an industry group representing insurers in Texas and Oklahoma.
As to how your insurance company would treat new damage resulting from a storm if you still have a tarp covering preceding damage, your insurer likely would treat it as a separate event, Ray said.

"Use common sense," she said. "That's why these things are called catastrophes."

Ray urges people to get what she called an "insurance checkup" with your agent ahead of the upcoming storm season to ensure you are insured up to the value of your home.

And if another storm threatens, rent a trailer, and cart your most precious belongings to a safe place.

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Q: I've always heard that during a hurricane you should have all the windows and doors on the storm-side closed and the windows and doors on the opposite side open. Is that true?

Angela Stephens
Beaumont

A: Absolutely not, said Dr. Christopher Landsea of the NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. All of the doors and windows should be closed (and shuttered) throughout the duration of the hurricane. The pressure differences between inside your house and outside in the storm do not build up enough to cause any damaging explosions. (No house is built airtight.)

The winds in a hurricane are highly turbulent and an open window or door - even if in the lee side of the house - can be an open target to flying debris. All exterior windows should be boarded up with either.

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Q: I've heard a rumor of a "Category 6" hurricane.

What's that?

Ed Mayeur
Village Mills

A: Apparently just an urban legend. You might be thinking of the 2004 TV movie "Category 6: Day of Destruction," a far-fetched disaster flick about what might happen if a hurricane and a tornado collided over Chicago.
But the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale tops out at a Category 5 with at least 155 mph winds and a storm surge of about 18 feet. An "extreme" Category 5 might look like the tropical storm that threatened Australia in late April with 217 mph winds.

"It just can't get too much worse," said Frank Lepore, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"Complete roof failure on many residences," "all shrubs, trees, and signs blown down" and "complete destruction of mobile homes," describe potential destruction of a Category 5 storm packing at least 155 mph and sending in a storm surge of about 18 feet, according to the National Hurricane Center's Web site.

Hurricane Rita was a Category 3 when she slammed ashore. Some homes still have blue roofs and cities are still picking up debris from the Sept. 24 storm.

Three Category 5's have made landfall: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew in August 1992.

Hurricane Gilbert in 1998 and the 2005 trio of Hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Wilma were Category 5's in the Gulf of Mexico, but all weakened before landfall.

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Q: As an avid hurricane tracker for the past 30 plus years, I have often wondered about the wind speed of these monsters when they reach the shoreline. They always land at a slower speed than the NHC projects. Does the depth of the water have anything to do with the slowing down of wind speed of a hurricane?

Rodney Baldwin
Beaumont

A: Interaction with land, particularly rough terrain, will decrease wind speed, according to meteorologist Dennis Feltgen of the NOAA. Once the "eye" of the hurricane moves inland, the wind speeds will decrease considerably because the hurricane is cut off from the heat energy of warm ocean water.

As for water depth, a very slow-moving or stationary hurricane will create significant upwelling of the ocean water beneath it, bringing cooler water from the deeper waters up to the surface and slowing the winds even more.

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Q: Is there a central telephone number where evacuees can call after the storm to get information about conditions, whether they can return, if utilities are on, etc?

Charlotte Lemke
Nederland

A: No, apparently not, although it certainly sounds like a great idea. Basic information of this type might be helpful if it was available at a central location, but it still involves more than one phone call to get the information evacuees might need after the storm.

The Texas Department of Public Safety, though on duty and manning emergency phone lines, is not an official agency for road closures. Jay Hall, the Regional Liaison Officer for the Governor's Division of Emergency Management said that although DPS is responsible for traffic control and road blocks, the agency generally refers all such calls to the Texas Department of Transportation.

That number, which will tell evacuees if roads are open for travel, is (800) 452-9292. Now, the number will have a basic recording about highway conditions, but in the event of an emergency, the line will be manned and updated regularly, according to Sue Tidwell, of the Beaumont District Texas Department of Transportation.

For electric service, customers still must call the electric company, which for residents of Nederland and much of Southeast Texas is Entergy. That number is (800) 368-3749.

Evacuees also can get updates, as well as photographs, numbers for help, and other important information by regularly logging on to this website.