HITCHCOCK — Hitchcock had the buses and the people needing a ride to get away from Hurricane Rita.
What they didn’t have were the bus drivers.
Police chief Glenn Manis said that while the buses were at Crosby Middle School in plenty of time, the drivers from Durham Transportation left.
“It’s been a huge mess,” said Manis. “The bus drivers just all left us. We are having to commandeer people to drive these people to safety.”
Manis complained, too, that a Durham company official also took off with the keys needed for extra buses the city and county had on reserve just in case the demand for transportation grew.
The situation in Hitchcock was not so much different than one that occurred during evacuation efforts in La Marque.
The city of La Marque was set to make one last run with evacuees just before midnight Wednesday.
About 80 people waited on the curb at the La Marque High School pickup point — but there were no buses. The reason: no one to drive them.
La Marque Fire Chief Todd Zacheral took somewhat the same approach as Manis did in Hitchcock. That included pressing La Marque school district Police Chief Russell Washington to drive one of the buses to Huntsville.
Another volunteer who has a commercial license stepped up to get the buses rolling.
Attempts to locate a Durham Transportation company representative for an explanation of why buses were left without drivers were not successful.
Things went much smoother in Texas City.
Texas City Emergency Management Coordinator Bruce Clawson said his city moved more than 500 people out of the city Wednesday morning.
The buses rolling from Texas City were staffed with volunteer bus drivers from the local school district.
Even with advance warning that the buses would pull out by noon, some didn’t get the message.
Still, Clawson had things covered.
“We anticipated there would be some people who failed to take action as we called for,” he said. “But we had three buses held back just in case. So those who did call we told them the last bus out of the city left at 6 p.m. (Wednesday).”
