Some people were angry. Others were kind. All were stuck.

Out of gas and some of them out of patience, hundreds of folks woke up Friday morning, or never went to sleep, marooned on an interstate highway. They were trying to get out of traffic-choked Houston to flee approaching Hurricane Rita.

"I don't know what to do," said Nissanka Dharmawardene, who left Wednesdsay evening with his wife and two children from their home in Clear Lake, a flood-prone area in south Houston. Almost 36 hours later, they were on the grassy shoulder of Interstate 45, about 50 miles from home. Their gas-starved car was pointed northbound on the normally southbound lane, a result of officials who rerouted traffic Thursday in an unprecedented step to relieve horrific congestion.

Dozens of cars were like theirs, lining the shoulders of the highway or abandoned in parking lots in front of businesses.

Ironically, traffic by daylight was sparse, a far cry from the gridlock the night before as an estimated 2.5 million people fled inland from the Gulf of Mexico coast.

"Last night we were bewildered. Now we are hoping, waiting for trucks to come," said Dharmawardene, 52.

"I guess you sit and wait for someone to bring you gas or wait for the hurricane to come and kill us," said 32-year-old Darrell Dailey from southwest Houston. He was hoping to get to Dallas with his wife and three kids, a sister and her child.

Out of fuel, they spent the night at an Oak Ridge North school in Montgomery County with more than 200 other families.

"I'm scared," said his 12-year-old daughter, Tykendrea. "I think the hurricane will come, and we're outside."

Dailey slipped a credit card into a gas pump at a closed station. It approved the transaction but dispensed no fuel.

That's when Jim Carroll, 55, walked up.

"I've got some," he said, walking over to his own truck, disabled because of a fan belt problem, to retrieve a five-gallon can about half-filled with gasoline.

Then using a cut plastic soft drink bottle as a funnel, he poured it in Dailey's car.

"Might as well let people use it," he said. "Let them get down the road."

"God bless you," Dailey told Carroll, who had hoped to get from his home in League City in Galveston County -- a likely flood area -- to Waco in Central Texas.

"We have been remarkably assisted by so many good citizens," Houston Mayor Bill White said of such random acts of kindness.

Dailey had spent the night in the gas station lot with about 50 people.

"It was hot, people were sleeping in cars, babies on the concrete were sleeping," Carroll said. "Not many people were prepared for this."

To help stranded motorists, Gov. Perry ordered crews with the Texas Department of Transportation to give away gas since gas was sparse.

TxDOT crews kept busy Friday morning giving motorists stranded or low on fuel at least $5 in gas.

"We are running on empty," one woman told KPRC Local 2 as she pushed her car off Interstate 10 to a gas station in Sealy, Austin County, where TxDOT crews were giving away gas. "I've been real frustrated. We've been crying, wondering if it was worth trying to evacuate."

One Shell Oil Co. gas station with pumps that failed Thursday was able to get them running Friday morning, and constables armed with shotguns guarded the pumps and formed a single long line of cars to organize the chaos. Only premium-grade fuel was left. There were few objections.

Karen Cheney said she had tried to soothe desperate motorists Thursday by giving away water.

"They attacked us," she said. "It was pretty hairy."

"We did lower the price to regular so we wouldn't gouge these people," Randy Pachar, the station owner, said Friday. "I'm just glad we were able to get this fixed. I wish we could do more."

Mary Coltzer, 68, was among several hundred who spent the night across the street in a parking lot, then was part of the long caravan of vehicles waiting Friday to get the unexpected fuel bonus. Overnight, people from a nearby neighborhood showed up to give them water.

"We'd have been in a world of hurt," she said, "Pretty damn miserable. It's not a lot of fun."

Rosa Castro, nearly out of fuel, walked to the front of the long line with a five-gallon plastic gas can, but officers said she'd have to be in her car, with her sister behind the wheel and their seven children in tow. They left Pasadena at 4 a.m., and stopped 17 hours later to spend the night in a Baptist church.

"It's been terrible, believe me," she said, wearing shorts, a T-shirt and house shoes. "We started with a full tank of gas and lots of water for the kids, but it was such a mess. I wondered why so many people in Katrina didn't move in time, and now I'm in the same situation. All I have is cash, clothes, and God."