After 33 years on the Texas Gulf Coast, I've learned that the best way to survive a hurricane is to listen real close to the TV weathermen and the first time someone says the storm is predicted to make landfall at a Certain City, put all your family and pets in the family car and drive straight to that Certain City. I guarantee it ALWAYS will be the safest place in five states on the whole Gulf Coast while the storm beats hell out of some other place 200 miles away.
If you really want to learn how to deal with hurricanes, forget the National Weather Service and the local police and city and county officials. Get to know a mid-level executive at a nearby refinery, and the next time a tropical storm heads toward the gulf, ask him what's going on at work. Refineries are multimillion dollar facilities that are not going to be shut down unless it is absolutely necessary. Also, they have to be shutdown in an exact sequence of steps over a period of days to prevent an explosion at some point or having sludge solidify like cement within a pipeline or other equipment. Gulf Coast refiners have lived with hurricanes their whole careers and they know what and what not to do and the exact moment to start doing it. Believe me, there has
never been a US refinery that has been caught still in the process of shutting down when a hurricane comes ashore in its vicinity. They have their own forecasters watching the storm and they know to the moment how much time it takes to deactivate a plant and minimize storm damage.
Of course, you can't always plan for everything. Louisiana and Texas refineries weren't knocked out by storm damage to their facilities when Katrina and Rita hit in 2005, but they were shut down by flooding and loss of electrical power from local utilities. The funny thing is that the old ARCO refinery over near New Orleans had experienced some flooding from another big storm a year or so before, so the owners invested some millions of dollars to build even bigger flood gates that could be activated in case of high water. As I remember it, the flood gates originally were just above what was thought to be the highest possible level in a 100-year storm. So this time, the company built them a few feet higher, certainly higher than any of the safety dikes around the City of New Orleans. Unfortunately, the new floodgates proved to be 6-12 inches lower than the level of water piled up by Katrina!
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