With Hurricane Rita expected to become a major hurricane today, Galveston declared a state of emergency Tuesday and announced a mandatory evacuation of the island that would likely begin at 6 p.m. today.
“It’s time to get on the highway,” Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said Tuesday morning.
Also included in the first wave of evacuations are Jamaica Beach, Tiki Island, Bayou Vista, Clear Lake Shores, Kemah, San Leon-Bacliff-Bayview and the Bolivar Peninsula.
Mandatory evacuations will go into effect for Texas City, La Marque, Hitchcock and Dickinson at 2 a.m. Thursday.
They will take effect in League City, Friendswood and Santa Fe at noon Thursday.
Once the orders take effect, those who leave the areas cannot return until after the storm. The circumstances under which people will be allowed to return will be decided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Galveston City Attorney Susie Green said.
Thomas said the decision to declare mandatory evacuations was reached at a meeting Tuesday that included officials from all cities in the county and County Judge Jim Yarbrough.
She said she did not know if there was a way to rescind the order if Rita’s path should change significantly.
“Storms can change overnight, we all know that,” Thomas said.
The storm is expected to strike the coast somewhere between Beaumont and Corpus Christi.
The track posted by the Tropical Prediction Center showed Rita going ashore in Matagorda County, which is south of Galveston County.
By Tuesday evening, the National Hurricane Center was projecting that it would turn into a major hurricane today and stay that way until landfall.
Once a mandatory evacuation is in place, residents will have to take routes spelled out in the state’s hurricane evacuation plan.
To avoid them, leave before the orders take effect.
“This is the time to take your own path,” City Manager Steve LeBlanc said.
A voluntary evacuation was called Tuesday morning.
The evacuation of nursing homes and assisted-living communities starts at 6 a.m. today.
City buses will begin carrying residents who do not have transportation off the island at 10 a.m.
The buses will leave from the Island Community Center at 4700 Broadway.
Residents who plan to take the buses and those who need help getting to the community center should call (409) 797-3710 to make reservations. The city will take those who don’t have reservations, but Thomas asked that people make them.
About 900 residents had made reservations by late Tuesday afternoon. LeBlanc said the buses have the capacity to get 2,300 people off the island.
Houston Metro buses are available if more are needed.
“We’re going to do our very best to make sure that everybody that needs to leave leaves,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that residents with special needs would be boarded first, then those with reservations.
The Citizens’ Response Team, a new organization tasked with identifying Galvestonians who need special help evacuating, was in full swing Tuesday.
“It’s working, we’re responding,” Jim Hale, co-director of the team, said.
The buses will take pets, but the pets must be in cages bearing the name of the owner and the pet. The pet itself should also have that information affixed to it.
Mainland cities also were using buses to evacuate on the same schedule, with the exception of Hitchcock.
Hitchcock’s bus service will begin Thursday while details of a plan were being worked out in Santa Fe.
Shelters for evacuees will be open in Huntsville this morning.
With 900 residents already signed up to leave on buses from Galveston alone, that’s city’s capacity for 1,000 evacuees will quickly be filled.
LeBlanc said that Huntsville would serve as a “shelter hub.” When its spaces fill, evacuees will be taken to shelters elsewhere.
All of the city’s police officers, fire fighters and emergency workers will stay on the island.
They will stay at the Emergency Operations Center at city hall. If the storm becomes too intense, they will move to the San Luis Resort.
Police will begin working 12-hour shifts starting Friday morning.
To ensure emergency communications, LeBlanc said that the city had some special cell phones that work when cell towers are jammed with heavy traffic. It also has some satellite phones that work even when cell towers are destroyed. LeBlanc said that the city has also made arrangements to communicate using ham radio operators.
Under the state of emergency declared Tuesday, the mayor is entitled to act without a majority vote of the city council.
If she is incapacitated, Mayor Pro tem Joe Jaworski takes that role. If he should be incapacitated, the senior member of the city council, Cornelia Harris Banks, gets the authority.
Meanwhile, the petrochemical industries in Texas City were also making plans for the storm. BP officials had suspended all nonessential operations and directed work to secure the company’s refinery and chemical plant.
Dow, Valero, Marathon and Sterling Chemicals all reported similar actions. None indicated if they planned to shut down any units or operations within their facilities.
