Hospital and nursing home patients have been transported out of Galveston ahead of the storm. And hundreds of thousands of National Guard troops are available to respond to Rita, if needed.
Nice to know somebody's got their shit together.
Critics of the response to Katrina have urged officials to learn the lessons of their mistakes. No one expected that the first test would come so soon.
Hell, I think it's great. You blow a test that bad, you damned well ought to get hit with the retest quickly. There hasn't been time for the bureaucracies to go through the full measure of their ass-covering and policy changing. The people making decisions will have to think on their feet (and clearly, some already have, if they're really emptying hospitals and nursing homes.) They will G3T IT R1TE, or more people will die.
[Update 6pm] Rice University (in Houston) has posted a logical set of instructions. It's clear to me they're already ready, and they know what the safest parts of their campus are.