Assignment 2: A Case Study: Standardizing Base Damage

Numerous different aspects were altered due to the ruckus of Hurricane Katrina. The first major aspect was housing and location. Katrina nearly demolished 300,000 homes. The ascending sea level along the coast resulting from onshore winds is a storm surge. With a twenty-two foot storm surge in New Orleans and a twenty-seven foot storm surge in Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina averaged a shocking twelve foot storm surge. As a storm surge’s footage increases, the surge will continue to move inland farther and farther. Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge is documented as moving inland a total of twelve miles into the state of Mississippi (FAQS, 2013). Hurricane Katrina impacted a total of seven states. Five of these states were Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Kentucky and Ohio were two more states affected but in a different way. Because of the tremendous amount of water, Kentucky and Ohio were victims of the Mississippi River flooding. Some states experienced more extreme destruction than others. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana experienced Hurricane Katrina’s wrath firsthand. These three southern states were affected the worst by the massive storm (FAQS, 2013). Mississippi’s forest industry experienced a great amount of destruction losing 1.3 million acres of valuable forest land. The main cause of destruction in New Orleans was blamed on the failure of the levee system to stand its ground

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response to the Northridge earthquake was almost immediate with the assistance of two urban search and rescue teams and the support from FEMA continued to grow after that (DeBlasio et al,. (2002). During the first week of rebuilding the Federal government provided an aid package to support the rebuilding needs of the area impacted by the earthquake. The aid package was broken down int several categories of recipients of the money with the two largest being money for FEMA and money of the Federal Highway Association. FEMA received $3.9 million and the Federal Highway Association received $1.35 billion (Eugene, 2010) According to Eugene (2010) the Federal Emergency Management Agency also provided assistance for

Who pays for all these damages? People who live in hurricane prone areas obviously have insurance to fall back on when these disasters strike. It turns out that insurance companies also have insurance for instances like this. When insurance companies get stuck paying out large sums of money to a lot of people, they occasionally need a little help and

While considering rebuilding New Orleans, a good question to ask is what the government would do with the money that it plans to use to rebuild the city if it was diverted to other projects. The best thing to do would be to build another city elsewhere or settling the people and businesses affected away from the city. Another option would be to give a cash settlement to every individual, family or business that suffered a loss and allow them to choose to rebuild in New Orleans or elsewhere. Suppose the federal government would spend $1.818 trillion to rebuild the city but instead gives a cash settlement to the city dwellers who are about $1.3 million people, each resident would get about $1.39 million that is more than enough to pay for a new home and business in a different town.

The expenses would simply be outrageous to fund and down-right impossible, which every American understands. Since many homes were not in a flood zone, most people did not have flood insurance. They will have to leave because they cannot afford to come back to their homes. Furthermore, people have grown tired of the numerous natural disasters that hit Louisiana. As Zack Kopplin states, “Climate change could sink all of our major coastal cities, but Louisiana is being held to a different standard, because we’ve already been hit with so many disasters”. That is why many media coverages have been particularly weak on the coverage of the flooding, only capitalizing on the disaster porn and other corrupted media coverages. The tunnel vision of the news media and the critics prevent and delay the reconstruction of Louisiana. It is true that it would take an immense amount of funding to completely rebuild Louisiana, but we can not allow money to get in the way of rehabilitating our fellow

The conception of transparency seems to be everywhere in todays time, from the products we consume as buying customers to the governments we look to in leading our nations. Social media is another refuge for transparency. With millions of people noticing, it’s difficult for any organization or individual to say one thing and do another. Supporters of the transparency movement say that it is a very good thing; after all, transparency is serving to keep people honest and up front about the products and services they sell to consumers.

Often, the government responds to natural disasters with thorough preparation and planning. The federal, state, and local levels of government do this in an effort to help reduce injury and property damage as well as ensure the overall safety of the general population. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season saw the costliest and one of the deadliest storms in United States history. This storm was Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina displaced of an estimated 645,000 Louisiana citizens (Cepeda, Valdez, Kaplan, & Hill, 2010). This paper will examine…

After Hurricane Sandy there was a bunch of damage done to theses states : Jamaica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, and the U.S. (“Superstorm Sandy”). “The hurricane left an estimated 200,000 people without shelter” (“Superstorm Sandy”). The property damage was an estimate from between $30-$50 billion (“Superstorm Sandy’’). Many people had no home for a long time nothing to come home to or

When one takes into account just the clean-up and recovery projects, Katrina does seem to outweigh 9/11 economically. Although, calculating specific mitigation and hazard controls implemented

As a disaster setback in you might be met all requirements for compensation to cover you remedial and recuperation cost, property repair or swap costs and pay for your enthusiastic inconvenience. If your injuries relinquish you by chance or for record-breaking disabled, you might be met all requirements for pay for your lost wages. Once in a while, accident losses in Texas might be qualified to recover reformatory damages which serve to rebuke the at-issue social event was awfully thoughtless.

The responsibility for maintaining existing levees and building new ones falls to the federal, state and local governments. In reality, the costs of most infrastructure projects are in the hundreds-of-millions to billions of dollars. This means that the cost burden must fall on the federal government (Webster). The federal government, however, failed to provide the necessary resources to build protective infrastructure for U.S. citizens since, “Under the Bush administration there was little money for nor interest in internal improvements, as the federal dollar was spent mainly on the military while the nation's infrastructure continued to deteriorate” (George). Had more money been spent on internal improvements, more levees could have been built and the impact of the storm lessened.

The flooding in South Carolina caused over $1 billion in damage. Thousands of residents, many surprised to find that their homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage, have had their lives shattered without any public assistance. Seventeen people have been killed, hundreds have been evacuated and thousands of homes have been destroyed, including the state capital of Columbia. Over 500 roads and bridges have been closed and tens of thousands of homes have been left without water and

* On May 9, 2006, Secretary Jackson approved Louisiana’s initial supplemental CDBG Disaster Action Plan and awarded the state $368.4 million to help meet the state’s infrastructure needs, provide interest-free small business bridge loans and support long-term planning efforts. On May 30, 2006, Secretary Jackson approved an amended plan and awarded an additional $4.6 billion of the state’s original $6.2 billion to fund Louisiana’s Road Home Program. This program provides up to $150,000 to eligible homeowners whose primary residences were located outside pre-Katrina designated flood zones and were destroyed or severely damaged following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. (Hurricane Katrina:  What Government is Doing, 2006)

After all the dust settled and we saw what it had done it took 106 billion dollars to cover all the damage! That's the costliest hurricane ever recorded in the world! Not to mention also had to wait months before we started to rebuild because New Orleans was flooded with water and unsafe working conditions. If you're still not on board with the fact that hurricanes can cause a lot of damage Katrina destroyed over 800,000 housing units! So not only did we spend a lot, but Homes and buildings like fire houses, restaurants, apartments, etc were destroyed along with flood waters covering the streets this was a disaster! However all this destruction was only the beginning of the recovery process. New Orleans still had a long way to go after Katrina swept through.

So, you can see that there are a lot of reasons to buy the hurricane insurance. Analyzing Joe Martinez’s earnings (175 000$ annually), we can say that the total premium for $ 13 000 is quite large amount (7% of annual earnings). If we will compare this amount with his monthly earnings ($ 14 583) it is 89%. But from another point of view, his eventual losses from hurricane’s devastation maximum can be $648 390, in case of 5th and 4th categories of hurricanes. We would like to give an advice to Joe Martinez, to buy standard and wind coverage insurance for $13 000, and he should think about