Even from a safe distance, it’s a relief to know that this year’s hurricane season is officially over. Although storms continue to brew over the Atlantic, there is comfort in knowing that no hurricane ever has struck the United States between December and May.
This year was the most active for hurricanes since records were kept, and forecasters are expecting another bad year in 2006. Perhaps now is a good time for Washington and the coastal states to take stock of the nation’s preparedness for future calamity.
Katrina was the worst storm in the nation’s third deadliest hurricane season, after 1928 and 1900. It killed more than 1,200 people in Louisiana and Mississippi, displaced uncounted thousands and collapsed levees built to protect New Orleans. Katrina, along with hurricanes Wilma and Rita, exposed major weaknesses in our preparedness – in the case of Rita, how to evacuate a major city like Houston; in the case of Wilma, how to deal with a massive power outage; and with Katrina, how to evacuate or rescue the elderly and others who lack the means to rescue themselves, how to house the displaced, how to recover the dead.
Governments ought to take the lessons learned and implement them. For example, cities should develop emergency response and evacuation plans; gas stations should keep backup generators on hand; emergency transformers should be installed to enable cities to operate during a massive power outage; and governments ought not do things on the cheap, like the Louisiana levees, or let wetlands be developed willy nilly.
Twenty-six tropical storms formed in the Atlantic this year; 13 turned into hurricanes. Of the four that hit the United States, three temporarily reached Category 5, with winds stronger than 155 mph. Wilma and Rita caused damage enough, but Katrina is the one that will go down in history – for those who experienced its devastation and for those of us who watched in horror or stepped in later to help pick up the pieces. The storm devastated a vast region, including a major city and the gambling economy of coastal Mississippi. Thousands of Katrina victims remain homeless. New Orleans is struggling to recover, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scrambling to fix the levee system.
There were so many big storms this year that weather forecasters exhausted their list of names and for the first time had to start using the Greek alphabet.
Why such ferocity?
Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dismiss connections to global warming. They say a more logical explanation is natural weather cycles in which seas on and around the equator warm and cool every 25 to 30 years. They say the current cycle started in 1995 and is projected to last another decade or longer.
Scientists believe they’ll know better by spring what’s in store for 2006. For now, they are watching as tropical storm Epsilon, which formed Tuesday, churns in the central Atlantic.
