Houston Democrats

Earlier in the day Jaime and I went to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. The shelves were completely empty of any kind of water and most canned goods were sold out. Just before we left, a delivery of bottled water was brought into the store, and we were able to grab three cases. Later, we were busy trying to decide what was most important for us to take with us when we left home. My daughter, Jaime, and I were also busy packing irreplaceable possessions as best we could and putting them in the safest place in the house with the hope that they would still be there when we returned.

At the time Rita was only a category 3 or 4.

Wednesday morning we cancelled our plans to go to Washington DC for the peace rally. I made the phone calls I needed to make to let Gold Star Families for Peace members know we wouldn’t be joining them for the rally. I sure wish we could have been there. All accounts report an awesome display of patriotism and peace. I am so very, very proud of the citizens of this country who are finally catching on!

We worked all day to get the house boarded up so we could get out of Houston as soon as humanly possible. Wednesday was an emotion packed day. Before my son died, he said “Mom, if anything happens to me while I’m in Iraq, I want you to take the life insurance money I’m leaving you and buy a house.” Jeremy knew that I had never owned a home of my own and never, in my whole life, been able to settle anywhere for very long. So, the prospect of leaving my house, Jeremy’s last gift to me, knowing that in all likelihood, we would return in a few days to nothing, was heartbreaking. When I am in my home, I feel Jeremy’s loving arms around me, protecting me the best he could, just like he tried to do when he was alive.

By this time, Hurricane Rita had been upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane.

We fought the stifling heat of the day (100 degrees) to get the house boarded up. My husband was climbing up and down ladders all day trying to get the job done. I finally had to make him take a break when the hottest part of the day hit, worried that he would suffer from heat stroke. We figured we had plenty of time to get the house boarded up, the cars packed and head out of town to stay with our friend in the San Antonio area.

I cried myself to sleep in the wee hours of Thursday morning, thinking I was sleeping in my home for the last time and that I would never see it again.

Thursday morning we started watching the news. Sometime in the afternoon we realized that there was absolutely no way we could safely make the trip out of Houston and on to San Antonio and safety. My oldest daughter, Danielle, and her friends left our house at 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night headed to Killeen, Texas. A trip that should have taken, at the most four hours, took them eleven. Reports from other friends who had left the city told of being on the road nine hours and only traveling twenty miles. Others told stories of being in the car anywhere from 18 to 24 hours and longer to drive two hundred miles. Journeys that never should have taken more than six hours – even given heavy traffic conditions, took a toll on many. There was not so much as a gallon of gasoline to be found within a hundred mile radius of Houston. There were no food supplies left as grocery stores and convenience stores closed their doors. Banks and ATM’s were running low on cash as customers withdrew money from their accounts.

Worst of all, there were no shelters along the way for travelers to take refuge. Weary refugees were running out of gas and abandoning their cars. Pets died from dehydration. There was very little to no help for hundreds of thousands of the refugees.

So, Jim, Jaime and I had to make the call as to whether or not we would be safer at home or on the road with a one-month old baby. Given the back up of traffic, we had no confidence whatsoever that we would make it out of harm’s way before the hurricane came ashore. Our cars were full of gas, but we knew that with the back up of traffic, we could run out. To avoid overheating their vehicles and to conserve fuel, many refugees weren’t running their air conditioners, had no water, and became dehydrated in the heat. We just couldn’t put ourselves or, more importantly, Baby Aiden, in that kind of risk.

By this time, the predicted hurricane course had shifted to the East somewhat, so we felt relatively confident that we could ride the storm out. It had been downgraded to a Category 4, which made us feel a little less uneasy, but we were still all scared and stressed. After much discussion, we decided that we would be safer at home than we would be on the freeway. We knew that the hurricane could shift and come back to the west, but we felt that staying home was the only real option we had.

Now, I know that many people in Houston and the surrounding areas had to make the same kind of decision we did. Ours is just one story among hundreds of thousands. My family is among the lucky because our house was just on the very outside edges of the storm. The winds here were not damaging, we got very little rain and only lost our electricity for a few hours. For us, the storm ended up being only a minor inconvenience in our lives.

But what happens next time? Houston lucked out with Hurricane Rita, as we have all seen by the news reports far East Texas and Louisiana. What if Rita had come ashore at Galveston and on into Houston and the surrounding areas?

Today, as I sit at my keyboard, I feel it’s time to start asking some really tough questions of our city leaders and of our federal government at the highest levels, which includes King George & Co. Why wasn’t there a better evacuation plan in place and why wasn’t it implemented sooner? Why weren’t shelters of some sort set up across the city for residents to go to who were not able to escape the impending disaster we believed was coming?

King George’s Department of Homeland Security is an utter and complete failure, as has been proven by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. FEMA is in shambles and the Red Cross isn’t faring much better. Funds that should have been used to take care of the citizens of this country and make us safer have been siphoned off to other programs, leaving FEMA nothing more than a shadow of what it previously was. The citizens of this great country have been told over and over again that we are safer today than we were four years ago when terrorists struck our country. We have been lied to. We are no safer today than we were then.

The war in Iraq is a disaster that never should have been. Thousands upon thousands of lives have been lost for no good reason.

In the meantime, King George is still running away from his problems, refusing to acknowledge that he is wrong or to listen to those who do not agree with him. He has been crisscrossing the country, doing his best to prop his image up after the government badly mismanaged relief and rescue efforts with Katrina.

It’s time for the American citizens to take back control of our country and our government. It’s time to remind our public servants, and by that I mean the President and his administration, Senators, Congressmen and woman, et al. that we are their bosses, not vice versa. We put them where they are to serve the public good, and they have not done so. They have severely abused their power for way too long. Because of this, we now have a President who doesn’t know how to lead the country and who has gotten his way every step of the way for way too long.

Every day more and more people are standing up and asking the tough questions, demanding the answers our leaders have not wanted to give. Americans are not stupid and we know what those answers are. We want to hear them come out of the mouths of the so-called leaders who have put us in this situation.

It’s time to end the war in Iraq and use the money to rebuild our storm ravaged country. It’s time to get King George & Co. out of the White House and hold them accountable for their unconscionable actions. It’s time for a Revolution of the every day American citizen! Give our country back to us and bring our soldiers home!

Amy Branham
Houston, TX
Mother of Sgt. Jeremy R. Smith
Nov. 1981 – Feb. 2004