Most of my family lives in the south in general, and Houston in particular. With the damage still being assessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I've been turning a nervous eye to Rita, which is making a beeline towards Houston and my family. Most of them, it appears, have left town, but there are a number of them who have decided (against reason, I suppose) to hole up and wait it out. The fact that there are, according to reports, 100 mile backups on surrounding highways in south Texas, and widespread gas shortages on top of them, probably weighed heavily into their decisions.

To me, Hurricane Katrina less exposed the failures of our government and emergency response systems (though there were certainly significant gaps) and more shed light on the fragile nature of our transportation infrastructure, which, in nearly every city in the country, is far too flimsy to support either a mass evacuation of this kind or an influx of goods and services that needs to happen immediately following a major disaster. At the risk of sounding selfish, I'm hoping that somehow we learned something three weeks back and that the response in Houston will be equal to the severity of the storm. If only because this time, for me, it's personal.