Hurricanes and Economic Research: An Introduction to the Hurricane Katrina Symposium

Abstract

[Author Affiliation]Bradley T Ewing, Jerry S. Rawls College of Business and Wind Science and Engineering Research Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2101, USAJamie Brown Kruse, Center for Natural Hazards Research, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, 27858-4353, USA; krusej@ecu.edu; corresponding authorDan Sutter, Department of Economics, University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX, 78539-2999, USA1. IntroductionHurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the United States. The tropical depression that became tropical storm Katrina on August 24, 2005, was the 11th named storm in a busy Atlantic hurricane season. Just one day later, Hurricane Katrina made its first landfall in Southern Florida as a Category One storm, causing both death and destruction. After moving into the Gulf of Mexico, it intensified and made its second landfall August 29, 2005, near the Louisiana-Mississippi border as a strong Category Four storm. The total impact of this killer storm in all of its human and environmental dimensions will not be determined for several years. Estimates of the monetary impact indicate that Katrina was the costliest storm in U.S. history. More than a million Gulf Coast residents were displaced by the storm.On the other side of the world, nine months before Katrina, the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami created devastation that was unimaginable. We learned that people had virtually no warning of the killer wave according to news bulletins that arrived minutes after the natural disaster. In contrast, the tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina was tracked for more than six days before it made landfall in Mississippi. Again, we watched in disbelief as news commentators showed us the damage and suffering that resulted from destructive wind, waves, and rain. Scenarios projecting a major hurricane making landfall near New Orleans have been studied for the last 20 years. Yet Katrina overwhelmed us in every way. Surely we can do better than this.As researchers, the failure of the system to deal adequately with the disaster provokes us to apply our intelligence and expertise to understanding the problem and to identify ways to protect our capital stock--both human and physical. We cannot and probably should not interfere with the natural processes that create hurricanes. Therefore, the challenge is to identify and adopt strategies that allow a region to reduce the disruption and promote recovery that improves the quality of life for all segments of the population. Resilience is the goal for structural, environmental, and human systems.The destruction caused by a hurricane is undeniable and has moved front and center on the national stage. Katrina disabled and destroyed much of the region's capital stock, including businesses, production facilities, lifelines, and housing. The forced migration prompted by Katrina highlights the potential for an area to also lose its human capital. The loss of physical and human capital by a region has significant short-term and possibly long-term effects on regional economic growth.2. Regional Economic Consequences of HurricanesHurricanes and natural disasters disrupt the economic activity of regions in a number of ways as business activity is interrupted and infrastructure is destroyed. In fact, a number of studies have documented the extent to which hurricanes, tornadoes, and other catastrophes interrupt business activity with some of the work geared toward determining how long these effects might last (Rose et al. 1997; Tierney 1997; Webb, Tierney, and Dahlhammer 2000; Rose and Lim 2002).A number of factors contributed to the findings reported in the literature, such as the type and severity of the event, the economic and political environment of the communities affected, and the state of the economy at the time of the disaster. Recognition of these factors is what has led to a small but growing body of literature that focuses on issues related to recovery and resilience (Burrus et al. …