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Hurricane seasons, past and passing
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Location: Blogs Now We're Talking |
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| Posted by: Joe Byrnes |
12/2/2006 3:57 PM |
I like to think we weathered the Florida hurricanes of 2004.
Three storms crisscrossed Florida just south of Marion County that year, and Ivan hit the Panhandle.
I remember driving around Silver Springs Shores in 40 mph wind, interviewing Ocalans with trees in their living rooms and, like many others, spending a week without electricity.
For all that, I have to acknowledge we never actually had a hurricane. What this county had -- with Frances and Jeanne -- were tropical storm-force winds. They were bad enough.
We had high anxiety, too, as repeated strikes undermined our sense of security.
On Thursday, we conclude the current year's wonderfully quiet hurricane season. El Nino -- a weather pattern involving warmer-than-usual equatorial Pacific waters -- gave us winds changing with altitude that sheared the tops off Atlantic storms before they could develop.
We are still paying for 2004 -- with our homeowner's insurance -- but, for most of us, things are back to normal.
A case in point -- the hurricanes certainly didn't stop people from moving here. That's one of many conclusions in a report this month by two demographers at the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Stanley Smith and Chris McCarty looked at the effects of Florida's 2004 season and compared them to the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast.
In New Orleans -- the richly historic, jazzy, aristocratic, multi-racial, church-going, Saints-believing, who-dattin', crawfish-sucking, carnival-crazy Crescent City of my birth -- very little is back to normal.
A few months after the 2005 hurricane, my youngest sister and her husband took my wife and me around the city, past miles and miles of destroyed homes -- each one a displaced family -- and businesses in ruin. I was overwhelmed by the immense devastation.
Katrina killed at least 1,833 people, directly or indirectly, and caused damage in excess of $80 billion.
The Florida storms killed 47 and caused $45 billion in damage. They displaced more people -- 1.7 million -- but the evacuees didn't go far or stay long.
Some 1.4 million fled Katrina, and many of those made their lives elsewhere. Smith and McCarty cited a Brookings Institution report that found the hardest-hit counties lost 452,000 residents.
In New Orleans most of the damage was from flooding, and private insurers didn't cover it. In Florida, 89 percent of those reporting damage were insured.
After Katrina, there has been a lot of blame to go around, for everything from inadequately designed and maintained levees, to a poorly planned evacuation, to shockingly inept government responses at all levels.
New Orleans has begun its slow, complicated recovery.
Smith and McCarty predicted the Gulf Coast will bounce back, as Florida did. New Orleans, they said, is a different story. It may never fully return.
I believe its people -- if we give them well-built levees and a helping hand -- will beat the odds. They will come back and rebuild their homes with front porches for music and laughter. They'll sit and tell stories to their grandchildren about life before the flood.
On Monday afternoons, students will rush home from school, drawn by the certainty of red beans on the stove. On Sundays in the fall, Saints fans will crowd around their televisions and cheer as the erstwhile 'Aints win another game in the Dome.
You see, it's happening already.
Joe Byrnes may be reached at joe@ocala.com or (352) 867-4112.
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