The Next Houston (from The Atlantic)

[jpak]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/whats-the-next-houston/538200/

The last time a major hurricane struck Miami directly, in 1926, it left almost 400 people dead, making it one of the 10 deadliest hurricanes on the record books in the United States. Yet that storm ravaged a sleepy, relatively small resort town of just 100,000. Today, the Miami metropolitan area has more than 6 million residents.

Even as Harvey lingers in the Gulf Coast, dumping rain on an already deluged region, the Atlantic hurricane season continues, and threatens to bring more nasty storms in short order. In the central Atlantic, Irma is some 3,000 miles southeast of Miami Wednesday afternoon, and is expected to become a hurricane later this week.

While it’s impossible to reliably predict where Irma might hit, and what strength it would have when it does, the prospect of another hurricane striking so quickly on the heels of Harvey is daunting. That would especially be true if it turned northward and struck south Florida.

For years, disaster planners have wondered where a major hurricane would strike next. There are plenty of cities that would fare poorly from a hurricane, but even New Orleans—where the loss of life was appalling, and the tag for the damage was the highest of any hurricane since 1900—is a relatively small city. Worse would be a full-force hurricane hitting one of the country’s largest cities, and planners tend to agree that the two cities most susceptible to a catastrophic hurricane are Miami and New York.

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[democratisphere]

1. There is no money to fund these large scale disasters going forward.

Can't imagine the total for Harvey. Costal cities are no longer viable as climate change accelerates.