South Louisianans may have breathed a sigh of relief as hurricanes Harvey and Irma steered away from Louisiana in recent weeks. But Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel says our relief may be short lived.
“It’s only a matter of time until our number is up again, and given the pummeling our neighbors to the west and east have taken this hurricane season, Louisiana isn’t out of the woods yet,” Riegel writes in her latest column.
Both hurricanes came a little over a year after an unprecedented 1,000-year flood saturated the Capital Region with nearly 30 inches of rain and just a few days after the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
“We’re running out of superlatives to describe these storms. How many times can you use words like ‘epic,’ ‘catastrophic,’ and ‘once-in-a-millennium’ before they lose their meaning?” Riegel writes. “We’re also running out of places to hide. New Orleanians and others from the vulnerable coast used to evacuate to Baton Rouge when hurricanes threatened. But we all learned last summer that the Capital Region is as flood prone as anywhere when the conditions are right.”
Houston—in the midst of its own disaster recovery—also is no longer a viable option when fleeing hurricanes, she says. And though New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu urged his citizens to head north in the days leading up to Irma’s landfall, Riegel wonders how can a city of a million people evacuate without using Interstate 10.
“It’s a chilling reminder of just how vulnerable we all are,” she writes. “Unfortunately, as these storms become more frequent, fierce, erratic and unpredictable, we don’t seem to be learning any lessons from the past or heeding advice from the experts. On the contrary, we continue to develop with abandon in coastal areas and in flood zones—not only in Louisiana but up and down the Gulf Coast.”
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