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A future of scary storms - will we be ready?

Have we seen America's future through the eyes of hurricanes Katrina and Rita?

Monster storms drowning cities and obliterating coastlines. Jobs vanishing and prices rising as ports and pipelines close. Millions fleeing, but many are trapped and die. Chaos reigns, paralyzing government and leaving the world's wealthiest society humbled and frightened.

Natural disaster in the United States has morphed to a dangerous new level. Some experts say the nation can expect to be pummeled by more of these catastrophes over the next 20 or 30 years in a nasty conspiracy of unfavorable weather patterns, changing demographics and political denial.

Just weeks removed from Katrina and Rita, it's not clear how the United States will play the new hand that nature appears to have dealt.

"Are we prepared to lose a major city every year?" asks Carnegie Mellon University risk strategist Baruch Fischhoff. "We failed quite significantly," said sociologist Havidan Rodriguez, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. "Will what we've seen over the last few weeks continue to be the case? It could unless we prepare. People tend to forget lessons learned."

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast might be a living laboratory for sustainable development and commerce that can withstand future calamities. For example, New Orleans' historic core could be reopened for tourism, but neighborhoods could be rebuilt on safer, firmer ground using more efficient 21st century technologies.

"The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them," said environmentalist Paul Hawken, a leading voice in the green design and green commerce movements. America's East Coast and Gulf Coast always have been in the path of powerful storms. The nation's weather history occasionally has been splattered with other Category 4 and 5 hurricanes - which pack the punch of hundreds of nuclear weapons and have the most potential to devastate huge swaths of land.

But since 1995, hurricanes have become more frequent and more intense. Statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe. Globally, more than 2.5-billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous two 10-year periods, U.N. officials report.

Those numbers don't even include the millions displaced by last December's tsunami, which killed an estimated 180,000 people.

Damage to insured property around the world in 2004 by natural disasters totaled $49-billion, according to the Zurich-based insurance giant Swiss Re. And that figure doesn't include the tsunami, either. Of the total, some calculations suggest that as much as $45-billion in losses came from a quartet of Florida hurricanes - Charley, Ivan, Frances and Jeanne.

The overall insured loss for 2004 is more than twice the $23-billion annual average in property losses since 1987, Swiss Re said.

So what makes natural events potentially more disastrous now? In the last several decades, the nation's population has migrated toward the coasts, and the value of their possessions has increased substantially.

More than half of the nation's 297-million people live in coastal areas. Florida's population has increased fivefold since 1950, and now 80 percent live within 20 miles of salt water. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, seven of the nation's top 10 fastest growing states are coastal.

And it's not just coastal populations that are at risk. Infrastructure supplies food, energy and materials nationwide like the body's circulatory system distributes blood and nutrients. If the New Madrid fault ruptures in the Midwest, the loss of key roads, railways, power grids and pipelines over the Mississippi River would likely choke off vital supplies to distant cities for months, including Washington, D.C., and New York.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency bases much of its planning on 100-year storm estimates that are decades old and don't always account for today's more intense storms and increased urbanization.

"In the decades to come, the equation will be completely different from what it is now," said Robert Muir-Woods, London-based research director for Risk Management Solutions, consultants to the insurance industry on natural catastrophes and terrorist strikes. RMS estimates that insured losses after Katrina and Rita have reached $70-billion thus far.

"So much of what you see in the United States now was built when hurricane activity was low and there was a Category 5 storm once every 30 years, not every year or two," Muir-Woods said. "Your investment decisions need to be revisited."

Other demographic changes not often associated with natural disasters are an aging population, the growth of assisted living communities and dependent-care facilities in warm-weather states and the increase in immigrant populations where English is not widely understood. All of which will make evacuations even more difficult, researchers say.

So how can the United States cope with a more dangerous future?

There is no single solution, but recommendations by architects, civil engineers and sociologists can be roughly sorted into a few categories.

--Beginning with infrastructure: Communications systems, power grids, roads and flood control measures - especially levees - should be expanded and hardened, they advise.

Louisiana's levees were built to withstand a storm surge from a Category 3 hurricane. Nationwide, levee construction largely has been deferred. In June, Congress and the White House slashed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' latest request for levee improvements in New Orleans from $105-million to $42.2-million.

Staring at a $200-billion cleanup tab, the original request now looks like a bargain.

Roads, bridges and other key features have been equally neglected. The interstate highway system that was clogged with evacuees is now 50 years old.

--A second priority: Turning knowledge into real improvements.

Katrina was perhaps the most-anticipated natural disaster in history, and both hurricanes were forecast accurately. But elected officials and top bureaucrats were reluctant to act aggressively on the advice of scientists and other experts.

As recently as last year, public officials war-gamed the impact of a fictional Hurricane Pam in New Orleans. "We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts," Ron Castleman, FEMA regional director, said at the time. The real disaster mocks his comments now.

--But perhaps the biggest question confronting the nation, according to disaster experts, isn't about building bigger dams or even reserving more buses and boats.

It's whether the nation has the will to squarely face more natural catastrophes. No one interviewed expressed any confidence in the special House committee created to investigate the Katrina response, in part because of political infighting.

Even while the Katrina investigation is ongoing, experts say America should prepare for future disasters using a new set of conditions that consider less obvious factors - like the predicted effects of global warming.

Farfetched? Oil companies that have strongly opposed climate-based environmental regulations are nevertheless raising their offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico by 15 feet in anticipation of higher storm surges. Just in case.

[Last modified October 2, 2005, 04:52:21]