The question is: What constitutes adequate fuel (+ margin) to get out of a major American city in or ahead of a disaster?
Second, how is one to calculate such?
Third, your own car is unavailable, and a car strange to you will be used.
Fourth, do the automakers tend to build the same "range" or "distance-to empty" into the fleet (with the exceptions of a few at the bottom and top of the mpg range)?
Are we smart enough here at BITOG to come up with some rules of thumb in this regard?
My experience:
Left Dallas yesterday to meet father-in-law en route from South Texas, ahead of the Hurricane Rita. Met him in Waco a little over one hundred miles from Dallas, along IH-35.
A drive that normally took him about 6-hours took over 12 (and he's been making it since a youngster with his folks, about 1922 or 23). Old guy was exhausted what with mentally consigning his home to the waters (luckily, storm changed path and this scenario won't come to pass) and some terrific road jams around San Antonio where IH-10 and IH-35 come together. My son and I spent 1.5 hours at 60-67 mph average speeds in transit to Waco, but it took 3-hours to return (nothing, of course, like it was for those folks on IH-45).
We saw quite a few cars with drivers obviously tired, and often both driver and vehicle were in poor shape. On the return trip saw construction equipment flying down 35 (never seen those big, articulated front-end loaders mover so fast; a half-dozen at a time). Several convoys of power company equipment, blue & yellow lights flashing.
CB chatter indicated (early Thursday evening) that diesel was out at two major truckstops over three hundred & fifty miles north from Corpus Christi (straight down IH-35 to the Gulf Coast), and that some others were restricting amounts sold. Got home and my local station was already out of 87-octane. (For reference, IH-35 is the NAFTA corridor -- legal and illegal -- and three-quarters of all 21 million Texans live along or EAST of this road. The real western US begins a few miles to the west of IH-35; too little rainfall all the way to the Pacific Coast. Few towns or cities of any real size to handle refugee populations. http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-035.html).
Like many, I have been watching the news coverage from SE Texas/Houston metro. More than 6-million people live down there, and thousands ran out of gasoline before making it to Dallas and other points along IH-45. Galveston is 300 miles from Dallas, and the northern edge of Houston metro is about about 200 miles (Conroe). Port Arthur is around 400 miles straight down US-287 from Ft. Worth (go the other way and US-287 takes you to Yellowstone National Park via Denver).
Normal drive time to Conroe is 3-hours, and to Galveston is about 4.75 hours from Dallas. I have yet to hear of anyone from south of the IH-610/IH-45 interchange who made it in less than 16-hours (if they started past midnight Wednesday into early Thursday morning).
Several reports had it that 20 to 40 miles in 12-hours was not unusual, and that many were already running out of fuel at that point.
You'll note as you watch the coverage that plenty of out-of-fuel cars are newer HONDA Civic and the like. And, with people (family and friends) traveling in convoys, lack of money is not quite valid as the reason they ran out of fuel (and not at all to the point of this question). (Nor are question about trains, buses, teletransportation, if you please.)
Questions in my mind:
1] Is a burn rate of 10%/capacity per hour a good rule of thumb for this kind of stop-n-go?
2] Would doubling fuel capacity be the first step of prudence for evacuation?
This is something I've wondered about since our buddies at BROWN & ROOT started buidling nuclear reactors both SW of Dallas and near Houston several decades ago. The terrorism angle has only added to it. There are no easy ways out of Dallas/Ft. Worth what with 6-million people and a metro area that stretches 100 miles E-W and over 50 miles N-S (more along the major routes for daily commuters).
Can we come up with something as a rule of thumb?
History holds hard lessons in evacuations. Let's plan a little.
Second, how is one to calculate such?
Third, your own car is unavailable, and a car strange to you will be used.
Fourth, do the automakers tend to build the same "range" or "distance-to empty" into the fleet (with the exceptions of a few at the bottom and top of the mpg range)?
Are we smart enough here at BITOG to come up with some rules of thumb in this regard?
My experience:
Left Dallas yesterday to meet father-in-law en route from South Texas, ahead of the Hurricane Rita. Met him in Waco a little over one hundred miles from Dallas, along IH-35.
A drive that normally took him about 6-hours took over 12 (and he's been making it since a youngster with his folks, about 1922 or 23). Old guy was exhausted what with mentally consigning his home to the waters (luckily, storm changed path and this scenario won't come to pass) and some terrific road jams around San Antonio where IH-10 and IH-35 come together. My son and I spent 1.5 hours at 60-67 mph average speeds in transit to Waco, but it took 3-hours to return (nothing, of course, like it was for those folks on IH-45).
We saw quite a few cars with drivers obviously tired, and often both driver and vehicle were in poor shape. On the return trip saw construction equipment flying down 35 (never seen those big, articulated front-end loaders mover so fast; a half-dozen at a time). Several convoys of power company equipment, blue & yellow lights flashing.
CB chatter indicated (early Thursday evening) that diesel was out at two major truckstops over three hundred & fifty miles north from Corpus Christi (straight down IH-35 to the Gulf Coast), and that some others were restricting amounts sold. Got home and my local station was already out of 87-octane. (For reference, IH-35 is the NAFTA corridor -- legal and illegal -- and three-quarters of all 21 million Texans live along or EAST of this road. The real western US begins a few miles to the west of IH-35; too little rainfall all the way to the Pacific Coast. Few towns or cities of any real size to handle refugee populations. http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-035.html).
Like many, I have been watching the news coverage from SE Texas/Houston metro. More than 6-million people live down there, and thousands ran out of gasoline before making it to Dallas and other points along IH-45. Galveston is 300 miles from Dallas, and the northern edge of Houston metro is about about 200 miles (Conroe). Port Arthur is around 400 miles straight down US-287 from Ft. Worth (go the other way and US-287 takes you to Yellowstone National Park via Denver).
Normal drive time to Conroe is 3-hours, and to Galveston is about 4.75 hours from Dallas. I have yet to hear of anyone from south of the IH-610/IH-45 interchange who made it in less than 16-hours (if they started past midnight Wednesday into early Thursday morning).
Several reports had it that 20 to 40 miles in 12-hours was not unusual, and that many were already running out of fuel at that point.
You'll note as you watch the coverage that plenty of out-of-fuel cars are newer HONDA Civic and the like. And, with people (family and friends) traveling in convoys, lack of money is not quite valid as the reason they ran out of fuel (and not at all to the point of this question). (Nor are question about trains, buses, teletransportation, if you please.)
Questions in my mind:
1] Is a burn rate of 10%/capacity per hour a good rule of thumb for this kind of stop-n-go?
2] Would doubling fuel capacity be the first step of prudence for evacuation?
This is something I've wondered about since our buddies at BROWN & ROOT started buidling nuclear reactors both SW of Dallas and near Houston several decades ago. The terrorism angle has only added to it. There are no easy ways out of Dallas/Ft. Worth what with 6-million people and a metro area that stretches 100 miles E-W and over 50 miles N-S (more along the major routes for daily commuters).
Can we come up with something as a rule of thumb?
History holds hard lessons in evacuations. Let's plan a little.
