Word: storm
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...seems like disasters are getting more common, it's because they are. But some disasters seem to be affecting us in worse ways - and not for the reasons you may think. Floods and storms have led to most of the excess damage. The number of flood and storm disasters has gone up 7.4% every year in recent decades, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. (Between 2000 and 2007, the growth was even faster, with an average annual rate of increase of 8.4%.) Of the total 197 million people affected by disasters in 2007, 164 million...
...happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused from $140 billion to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900," says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed...
What's changed is what we've put in storms' way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels. First, it is harder for us to evacuate before a storm because of gridlock. And in much of the developing world, people don't get the kinds of early warnings that Americans get. So large migrant populations - usually living in flimsy housing - get flooded out year after year. That helps explain why Asia has repeatedly been the hardest hit area by disasters in recent years...
DeJean rode out the storm at his house. He took several seconds to consider how to protect bayou communities like his - and whether a kind of Great Wall of Louisiana would be built. He says: "It probably could help. But you need floodgates on everything. The only way it'd work is for everything to be connected. You couldn't have pieces [of the levee] here-and-there, you know?" he says, standing outside his one-story white clapboard house...
...White House is trying not to take the scheduling slight to heart, even though a satellite address had once seemed a necessity only if Bush had to stay in the Gulf region to monitor the storm's aftermath. Perino said Bush still has good reason to stay put in Washington: behind Gustav, other storms are lurking. "We have Tropical Storm Hanna, and Ike that's following behind that, and possibly another one behind that," Perino said at the briefing today. "And so it's appropriate that the President be able to be here at the White House...