A tale of two states. When Katrina hit New Orleans, everyone in America knew the shit that went on. rows and rows of school buses flooded and ruined. People trapped in the Super Dome. Few had the inclination to just travel 40, 50, or 60 miles away to Baton Rouge. New Orleans should have been allowed to die on the spot and to let the Mississippi to reclaim its rightful course. There were several other Gulf Coast ports that could have picked up the slack. Mississippi and Alabama were probably hit harder than Louisiana, but Louisiana got the play. Bus loads of people were accepted in Texas as refugees.
Three weeks later, Rita, following basically the same track, though at first determined south Texas coastline between Victoria and Corpus would be landfall, kept shifting north until it walked right up the Sabine Channel after smacking the hell out of Cameron, LA again, ripped the hell out of Lake Charles and left Beaumont and surrounding areas in SE Texas ghost towns. The difference was in the state preparations. People trapped in traffic jams took 20+ hours to get far enough North to find a place to stay. When it became obvious the one and two lanes of north bound traffic was bottle necked, the other lanes were made one way traffic lanes heading north. Gas tankers roamed the highways furnishing gas to the cars that were out. Ice and water was furnished. We waited until Friday, and when it was obvious it was coming to us, we went west to Richmond the other side of Houston to our daughters. Maybe saw four or five cars heading west, tons heading east with nowhere to go. Dallas County sent buses to help evacuate, the Air Force had C130s set down at Mid Jefferson County to to evacuate the patients in hospitals that were completely bedridden and needed full care. At the time there was a equipment drive on ship for the transport of equipment used by the Army anywhere, permanently docked in Beaumont. It was used to load all the first responder and police vehicles on board, anchored in the channel, and was offloaded as soon as the winds died down.
Texas, unlike Louisiana was more than prepared for a hurricane or other disaster. A couple of years later I learned my lesson with Ike.