Reid About It

For the past week, my city has been home to thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Rita, in addition to the thousands that may still be here from Hurricane Katrina. We've tried our best to make them feel at home, which means getting them foor, water, and shelter, and then letting them wait in line in traffic with the rest of us.

Now, a week after Rita blew through, we've still got most of them here. They'd all like to go home, but there's a slight problem left in their home cities.

They're closed.

Yep, I've gone 35 years of my life, and we've never closed a city. Not for terrorist attacks, tornadoes, wildfires, riots, Olympics, gas shortages, Arsenio Hall tapings, or anything else.

Now, though, we're closed. When people really need to get into their houses, and try and dig out from the latest in a string of tragedies, the government has just decided that it would be better if everybody would just sleep under an overpass up north for the time being. It's too hard to hook up the power cables again, just like it was too hard to actuall, oh, I don't know, bury the cables underground in an area that gets hurricanes about three times a year?

A wacky idea, I know, but bear with me.

First New Orleans, now Houston and Beaumont. It seems like our Homeland Security department is basing their emergency planning around the plot of "Escape From New York."