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    <title>Houston Mayor’s No-Win Dilemma: Whether to Tell Residents to Stay or Go - The New York Times</title>
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                        			<h1 itemprop="headline" id="headline" class="headline">Houston Mayor’s No-Win Dilemma: Whether to Tell Residents to Stay or Go</h1>
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<p class="byline-dateline"><span class="byline" itemprop="author creator" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"  itemid="https://www.nytimes.com/by/manny-fernandez">By <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/manny-fernandez" title="More Articles by MANNY FERNANDEZ"><span class="byline-author" data-byline-name="MANNY FERNANDEZ" itemprop="name" data-twitter-handle="mannyNYT">MANNY FERNANDEZ</span></a> and </span><span class="byline" itemprop="author creator" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"  itemid="https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-fausset"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-fausset" title="More Articles by RICHARD FAUSSET"><span class="byline-author" data-byline-name="RICHARD FAUSSET" itemprop="name" data-twitter-handle="RichardFausset">RICHARD FAUSSET</span></a></span><time class="dateline" datetime="2017-10-29T07:51:25-04:00" itemprop="dateModified" content="2017-10-29T07:51:25-04:00">AUG. 28, 2017</time>
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        <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="407" data-total-count="407">HOUSTON — Phyllis Ullman, 73, had been evacuated from her flooded neighborhood Monday morning, and was visibly shaken as she sat in the back seat of a rescuer’s pickup truck speeding through the spitting rain. You can’t argue with Mother Nature, but she had strong words for Mayor Sylvester Turner’s decision not to issue a mandatory evacuation order for Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="180" data-total-count="587">“We would have been upset and come home to find damage at our house, but it would have been probably easier on people,” she said, adding: “He should have done it by zones.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="213" data-total-count="800">Not so, said the volunteer rescuer who had come for her. “You can’t evacuate five million people,” said Kyle Gajewsky, 59, from behind the wheel. “You would have to start two weeks before this happened.”</p><figure id="media-100000005396804" class="media photo embedded layout-large-vertical media-100000005396804" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/08/29/us/29leaders/29leaders-blog427.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="645" data-total-count="1445">As residents continued to be plucked from roofs and rescued from flooded streets on Monday, it became increasingly evident that Mr. Turner’s decision not to order a mandatory evacuation in the face of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/hurricane-harvey-storm-flooding.html">Hurricane Harvey</a> was the most significant move of his first 20 months in office, and perhaps his long political career. Though criticized from afar, the decision was praised by many Houston officials and residents who remember the disaster that unfolded before Hurricane Rita in September 2005,, when local officials called an evacuation that put 3.7 million people in sweltering, hourslong traffic jams that resulted in more than 100 deaths.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="475" data-total-count="1920">The decision not to evacuate Houston this time has played out at a time of intense political polarization in Texas, often pitting a Democratic city against a Republican governor and legislature, and it came amid what could become the most expensive disaster in Texas history. It was also a kind of emblematic dilemma facing leaders of coastal cities in an age of a warming climate and ever more powerful storms, who are often left with no good options — only less-bad ones.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="371" data-total-count="2291">“We are in an era where greater flood threats are going to present themselves on an increasingly urbanized population,” said <a href="http://geography.uga.edu/directory/profile/shepherd-marshall/">J. Marshall Shepherd</a>, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society. “How, going forward, are we going to manage the decisions related to evacuation?”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="188" data-total-count="2479">The strongest supporters of Mr. Turner’s decision included some of those caught up in the disaster preceding Hurricane Rita, which, in the end, moved eastward and largely missed Houston.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="290" data-total-count="2769">Janice Smaihall, a lifelong Houstonian — and registered Republican who voted for President Trump — had nothing but praise for Mr. Turner’s handling of Harvey. She said that a friend’s mother was one of the 23 nursing home residents who died in a bus fire during the Rita evacuation.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="229" data-total-count="2998">“What people don’t understand who don’t live in Houston is how easily gridlock can happen on the highways,” Ms. Smaihall said. “To have a general evacuation of Houston is absurd. You’re asking for another disaster.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="480" data-total-count="3478">Mr. Turner, Houston’s second-ever African-American mayor, took office in January 2016 after barely winning a racially polarized election against Bill King, a white independent backed by the local Republican party. Mr. Turner, 62, grew up poor in the largely black neighborhood of Acres Homes. He was among the first black students to integrate an all-white school in Houston, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard University, and serve 26 years in the state legislature.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="261" data-total-count="3739">As mayor, Mr. Turner set out to be a unifier, bragging about the 10,000-plus potholes he had filled — a few of them personally, with a shovel — and vowing to tackle the city’s financial problems and bring new public transportation to ease clogged traffic.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="274" data-total-count="4013">When Hurricane Harvey began brewing offshore, Mr. Turner began meeting at least a week ago with Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s top executive and a Republican well-known for his experience and skill at dealing with storms: His nickname is “Hunker Down Ed.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="157" data-total-count="4170">By midweek it was obvious that while the storm would make landfall as a hurricane, it wouldn’t hit Houston directly, but would bring catastrophic rainfall.</p><div class="newsletter-signup variant-1-hidden " id="newsletter-promo" data-newsletter-productCode="RR" data-newsletter-productTitle="Race Related" aria-labeledby="newsletter-promo-heading">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="360" data-total-count="4530">Alan Bernstein, the director of communications for the mayor’s office, said that the two men took into account the tragic evacuation order after Hurricane Rita. But they also believed that declining to issue a mandatory evacuation was the best move, given the nature of the threat, which was mostly heavy rain, not a huge storm surge or extremely high winds.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="389" data-total-count="4919">Dr. Shepherd, the meteorologist, declined to comment on the wisdom of any specific decision, but he said that in general, declining to issue a mandatory evacuation makes sense in the face of a flood threat from rain, given how unknowable the details are in advance. “To pinpoint exactly where those rain bands are going to set up is really beyond our meteorological ability, ” he said.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="188" data-total-count="5107">Dr. Shepherd also noted National Weather Service statistics from 2014 showing that 66 percent of the drowning deaths in the United States that year occurred while the victims were driving.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="227" data-total-count="5334">Then, in a Friday news conference<strong>,</strong> Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that residents of Houston, the coast and in between should “strongly consider evacuating” even if an order “hasn’t been issued by your local official.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="246" data-total-count="5580">Bill Kelly, the mayor’s director of government relations, said that Mr. Turner’s reaction to the governor’s words was one of “immediate concern,” and he moved quickly to send out Twitter messages that again urged residents to stay home.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="181" data-total-count="5761">At a news conference later in the afternoon, Mr. Turner and Mr. Emmett said that residents should focus on another of the governor’s instructions: Listen to the local authorities.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="259" data-total-count="6020">“There is no need, at this point, for people to be thinking about leaving, getting on the road, putting themselves in greater danger,” Mr. Turner said. “Quite frankly, you’ll put yourself in more danger by getting on the road when there is no need.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="483" data-total-count="6503">With a life-threatening hurricane now bearing down on Texas, a fundamental issue had become politicized. Liberals criticized Mr. Abbott, <a href="https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/901201825956864002">arguing</a> that he was coaxing residents to put themselves in harm’s way. On the conservative website Red State, a columnist <a href="https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2017/08/27/houstons-mayor-tell-residents-not-evacuate/">wrote</a> that the governor’s evacuation call was “sound and measured advice which any responsible public official would have given. But then, you wouldn’t be holding a position of responsibility in Harris County, TX.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="199" data-total-count="6702">Still, Mr. King, the mayor’s competitor in the 2015 election, said that he fully supported the mayor’s decision not to call an evacuation order. He, too, cited the experience with Hurricane Rita.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="398" data-total-count="7100">“It was a nightmare,” he said. “On a normal day, our roadways are not designed to handle that many people moving in one direction. Gas stations don’t keep that much of an inventory of gas on hand. Some cars are going to be old and break down. And usually when this happens, it’s hot as hell in Houston. You put people not in good health in that situation, it’s a recipe for disaster.”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="265" data-total-count="7365">Some experts said that Houston’s response did not necessarily have to be an either-or proposition, and said that it might have been wise to force an evacuation of the city’s most vulnerable communities — for example those in the city’s <a href="http://www.harriscountyfemt.org/">100-year floodplains</a>.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="411" data-total-count="7776">“You don’t have to put millions people on the road,’’ said <a href="http://www.lsu.edu/eng/cee/people/Wolshon.php">Brian Wolshon</a>, an expert in traffic and transportation engineering at Louisiana State University who studies hurricane evacuation plans along the Gulf Coast. “But you have to know your hazard, know your threat, and know who needs to move and who doesn’t,” he said. “It takes a lot of preplanning and coordination, but it can be done.”</p><button class="button comments-button  theme-speech-bubble-large" data-skip-to-para-id="">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="387" data-total-count="8163">In the face of so much dislocation, the political positioning diminished once the storm hit. Mr. Abbott has declined to second-guess Mr. Turner and Mr. Emmett, part of a broader spirit that now pervades the state as Texans pull together in the face of tragedy. On Sunday, the governor was asked on ABC’s “This Week” program if Houston officials erred by not ordering an evacuation.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="56" data-total-count="8219">“The local officials know best about this,” he said.</p><footer class="story-footer story-content">
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                <div class="story-notes"><p>Manny Fernandez reported from Houston and Richard Fausset from Atlanta.</p><p>Michael Hardy and Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Houston, David Montgomery from Austin and Hiroko Tabuchi from New York.</p></div>
        
        
        <p class="story-print-citation">A version of this article appears in print on August 29, 2017, on Page A11 of the <span itemprop="printEdition">New York edition</span> with the headline: Houston Mayor’s Grave Dilemma: Whether to Tell Residents to Stay or Go. <span class="story-footer-links">  <span><a href="http://www.nytreprints.com/" target="_blank">Order Reprints</a><span class="pipe">|</span></span>  <span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html" target="_blank">Today's Paper</a><span class="pipe">|</span></span><span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY" target="_blank">Subscribe</a></span>
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