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By Joe Stinebaker, Kevin Moran, Richard Stewart, Ruth Rendon, Staff
Houston Chronicle © 2005
February 20, 2005
CORRECTION: Gov. Rick Perry's staff told Kemah Mayor Bill King that the governor did not support legislation making emergency evacuations mandatory. This story misidentified who told King. Correction published 2/23/05.
Bill King has a vision he can't shake.
He sees long lines of vehicles - family cars with young children in the back, pickups pulling expensive boats, and buses filled with the sick and the old - trapped in a major traffic jam on Texas 146 or the Gulf Freeway. Behind them, a massive hurricane churns ashore.
Ahead lie washed-out bridges, flooded roads and thousands of sets of taillights. Their escape route has been cut off, and time is running out.
King, Kemah's mayor, is one of many area critics who believe that lackluster evacuation planning and unrealistic expectations by state and local emergency officials could doom thousands of coastal Texans to horrific deaths when a Category 4 or 5 hurricane strikes.
"We have got to have this right, because sooner or later there's going to be a bullet in the chamber," King said. "Sooner or later, we're going to get an event. And if we do not have it right, and if we haven't been out there and practiced (an evacuation) and everybody knows exactly where they're supposed to go and what they're supposed to do, then we're going to kill a bunch of people."
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