Florida Has Sustained $213.2B in Hurricane Damages

Hurricane Andrew was the biggest disaster to hit Florida previously. That was in 1992. For a retrospective on that disaster, listen to this Disaster Zonepodcast: “Hurricane Andrew--30 Years Later.”

I recorded the above podcast just over a month ago with Kate Hale, the then-Dade County Emergency Management director, to mark that occasion.

I recently read a quote from a woman who lived through Hurricane Ian: “This was the storm of my lifetime.” My question is, will it remain “the storm of your lifetime?”

What climate change promises is more frequent and larger and more destructive disasters to come. As people start to rebuild next to the beach, are they thinking, “OK, that was the big one. I’ve got another 30 or more years before another storm impacts this region.”

The above is not a good planning assumption. Just look at the dollar numbers in the title of this blog post.

See how quickly things can change. My blog post of Sept. 26 had this title:“Hurricane Season Has Finally Arrived!” Ian was identified as a potential threat and only expected to be a tropical storm when it impacted Florida. The warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico changed all that.