1. seed
  2. East Coast Disaster Aftermath

East Coast Disaster Aftermath

By milhayser on September 14, 2011.

Natural disaster struck twice last month on the east coast of the United States: first, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake rattled windows from Atlanta to Boston, and then a waning hurricane whirled all the way to New York City and on to Canada as a tropical storm. The temblor caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, but the storm caused billions, and killed dozens of people. Sharon Astyk provides a firsthand view of the damage in upstate New York, where the storm turned her farm into a swamp, her creek into a raging torrent, and her locust trees into goat fodder and firewood. She implores, "please remember and help your local farmers anyway you can - most of them will struggle to rebuild after this disaster and to go forward." On The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski writes "hurricane Irene wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. [...] Many of the New Yorkers who ignored Mayor Bloomberg's orders to evacuate are probably feeling smug." But she says Irene only proved that hurricanes can be unpredictable, and encourages us to always be prepared. And on Thoughts from Kansas, Josh Rosenau calculates just how unlikely it was to have the proverbial lightning strike twice. He states the odds as 1 in 1,500,000. If an asteroid hits Philly tomorrow, we'll start worrying about Armageddon.

Tags
disaster
Picking up the Pieces
The Odds

More like this

Lesson from Irene: Hurricanes are unpredictable
Hurricane Irene wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. The consensus here in DC seems to be "nowhere near as bad as Isabel" (which hit the Mid-Atlantic in 2003), and many of the New Yorkers who ignored Mayor Bloomberg's orders to evacuate are probably feeling smug. Nonetheless, millions of…
Storm Views and Supporting Northeastern Farmers
Thought you might want to see what the storm looked like from here. Let me note that this is a pretty minor situation - the farms in the valley that we rely most heavily on lost *all* of their crops - the whole thing was swept away by the storm. Still, I admit, I broke into the chocolate the…
Will Sandy Typify 21st Century Weather?
Hurricane Sandy Impacts Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge (DE) by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29th, drawn northwest by two cold fronts into the most populous area of the United States. Coby Beck has a telling wind map of the colossal storm on A Few…
Storm Update
So we made it through. Let me just note, however, that anyone who says that Irene was a wimpy storm that didn't do much damage shoulda been here. We're safe, but it was a near thing. We had close to 9 inches of rain and wind gusts that I'd estimate above 60mph - they took down two big locust…