Category Archives: Hurricane

State of Texas Cannot Do Hurricane Recovery Either

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Flag of Texas

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I have blogged about recovery problems in LA after Hurricane Katrina several times. Now it is time to take a look at the mess in the state of TX. As reported in the NYTimes on march 8, Amid Finger Pointing, Hurricane Relief Lags. Governor Rick Perry does not win any praise for his role.  As noted in the article:

Nearly four years after Hurricanes Ike and Dolly wreaked havoc on the Texas coast, thousands of Texans are still waiting for housing assistance. The long-term disaster recovery effort financed by the federal government has made little headway. But where two state agencies faltered, another is stepping in.

According to a state report to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development at the end of June, none of the 4,100 homes that were expected to be rebuilt or reconstructed with federal money were completed. And by October, the state had spent only 10 percent of the federal money for long-term recovery.

I am glad to see HUD taking a more prominent role in recovery and telling it like it is.

Thanks to Bill Cumming to pointing me to this article.

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Hurricane Irene — updates

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When Will We Ever Learn the Lessons of Hurricanes, by Orin Pilkey, CNN, August 25. Here is a short snippet from the article:

When the storm has passed there will be a wave of sympathy for the many families and businesses that will be affected. In the beach communities, patriotism will prevail, American flags will be unfurled on makeshift flag poles and the dominant attitude will be: “we’re tough and were coming back.” I’ve witnessed this a dozen times. A better attitude is “we’ve learned a lesson, let’s build elsewhere.”

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The National Hurricane Service, the National Weather Service and others are all issuing dire warnings for the eastern seaboard this week.  Here is a chilling article about the vulnerability of the NJ and NY shorelines.

Updates re likely path of Hurricane Irene, on the FEMA website.

In case you have any doubt about how serious this storm may be for the Atlantic region, CNN is now talking about it being a 100 year flooding event.

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Coming Soon: Hurricane Season

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NASA Satellite Captures Hurricane Earl on Sept...

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According to the scientists at Colorado State University, the forecast for hurricanes in 2011 is slightly higher than average. As of April, click here to see their prediction for this year.

Regarding estimates of vulnerability and risk, this new study may be of interest. Hurricanes Pose Risk To 1.8 Million Coastal Homes In U.S., a report from CoreLogic, a real estate co.

More than 1.8 million homes along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are at great risk of being damaged by a hurricane, three times the number located in federally defined flood zones, according to a report released Tuesday. The report by CoreLogic, a private real estate data firm, focused on the potential impact of storm surge, which is the indirect damage from water and flying debris triggered by strong winds. Roughly two-thirds of the homes cited in the report are located outside Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zones.

Storm surge can cause extensive damage when seawater breaks through structures and carries debris with it. That’s what happened in New Orleans in 2005, when storm surge from Hurricane Katrina broke the levee system and flooded most of the city and surrounding parishes. The homes most at risk are concentrated in Virginia Beach, Va., New Orleans, Tampa, Long Island, N.Y., and Miami. The report examined the exposure of a single home to storm surge in 10 U.S. metro areas. It used computerized models, which generated the probability of a hurricane hitting a particular area, residential density rates, elevation, levees and barriers and water depths along those coastal areas.

The report also looked at the damage caused by a storm’s direct impact. Florida and Texas are the states most vulnerable to a direct hit. Corpus Christi, Galveston and Houston and Jacksonville, Miami, Palm Beach and Tampa were cited as facing the greatest risk in those states.

I just got a copy of the full report (32 pp.); I have attached a copy here: 2011 CoreLogic Storm Surge Report

Buyouts after a disaster — may be the most cost-effective recovery option

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Hurricane Katrina Video from NASA GOES Satellite

Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video via Flickr

From a book review in BusinessWeek.com, March 17, a Harvard economist looks at urban life in the future: Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Healthier and Happier, by Edward Glaeser.Penguin Press; 352 pp; $29.95.  Athough the book is primarily about urban planning, one quote from the review is worth considering:

The author’s prescription for Detroit, as well as Buffalo and Leipzig, is to “shrink to greatness” by searching for fresh advantages. What if they fail? Well, that would be too bad, but Glaeser believes cities are about people, not places or buildings. Does it make economic sense to resurrect Detroit when the cost of building a house is greater than the reward from selling it? It could have been cheaper, he notes, to hand every household in New Orleans $200,000 after Hurricane Katrina rather than pump vast quantities of public money into rebuilding a city of waning economic significance. As disturbing as this may sound for New Orleanians, there exists a far more disturbing thought: Glaeser may be right. As the latest U.S. Census figures prove, the city’s capital is disappearing in droves.

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Post-Katrina: reconstruction of housing units in MS

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For five years,  disputes have been pending about rebuilding housing for low-income residents who lost their homes due to Hurricane Katrina. Recently, the matter was settled; and perhaps that settlement will be helpful in the aftermath of future disasters in the U.S.  Katrina Victims in Mississippi Get More Aid. NY Times, Nov. 16.

Federal and state officials and housing advocates announced on Monday the creation of a $133 million program to address housing problems that remain for poor Mississippi residents five years after Hurricane Katrina.

The announcement comes after months of negotiations by officials from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Mississippi governor’s office and housing advocates on the coast, and could bring to a close a long-running dispute about the state’s spending of federal grant money after the hurricane.

It seems that both parties had to change their positions to resolve this dispute equitably. Hopefully, in the future it will not take five years for residents to know what their living arrangements will be, after a major disaster.

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Haiti and Hurricane Tomas — an update

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Map of Haiti

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The latest ( 7pm EST) Friday:  Info from Relief Net is quite alarming.

Today, Friday, is the day that Hurricane Tomas is expected to come closest to Haiti; winds are estimated at 80 to 100 mph.

See the excellent posting on Nov. 5 by Phil Palin on Homeland Security Watch regarding the sadly dragging recovery process in Haiti.  He covers some of the background issues on the organizations charged with recovery. More light and more attention needs to be paid to boosting the capabilities and efforts of the recovery organizations.  Not a satisfactory state of affairs regarding the international agencies and other organizations pledged to help with the earthquake recovery.

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