What I will write below is VERY cynical, and a year ago I would never even have considered it might be true.
But, the Internet is now filled with discussion of whether officials made the correct decisions on their advisories about evacuation. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said "no, stay home." The mayor was thinking of the gridlock as two-plus million people went onto the highways, and that facing down the storm at home was actually safer...but Governor Greg Abbot told people, “Even if an evacuation order hasn’t been issued by your local official, you need to strongly consider evacuating.”
Here is the cynical part: One economist I tend to admire suggests that a city like Houston, near the stormy gulf on flat low ground, needs to have an evacuation strategy in place BEFORE storms like Harvey arrive. AND the reason Houston did not do that was that our economy is so deeply based on profit now that building the infrastructure for evacuation was not profitable enough!
...because the developers and corporations essentially 'own' the government now through their campaign contributions and such, so their desires prevail (profit-oriented and death-dealing).
I wish someone could assure me all this is NOT true, and that my sources are mistaken. My professional life was in health care, totally oriented toward saving lives no matter the cost, absolute first priority save lives.
http://amp.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article169667992.html