Coastline growth magnifies hurricane damages, conference hears

Damage inflicted by hurricanes will only get worse in the future because of the increasing development and population density along US coastlines, according to speakers at a recent Hurricane Symposium in London, England, held by the Insurance Leadership Institute of GE Insurance Solutions.
The size of U.S. hurricane losses will continue “to stagger and astound us” as a result of population growth and wealth accumulation in hurricane-prone coastal regions, according to Roger Pielke, Jr., the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado.
“As large as (Hurricane) Katrina was, it wasn’t unprecedented,” Pielke says. He adds that storms of such magnitude have occurred in the past, but they inflicted less damage because the coastal regions were not as densely populated as they are today.
Ken Slack, a senior underwriter for Global Property, GE Insurance Solutions, observes that at least three of the four hurricanes to hit the Florida coastline in 2004 Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan would have threatened far greater devastation if they had not veered at the last moment and hit less populated areas. Even so, he notes of the 2004-2005 hurricane season, “we’ve had three of the top five storms in the last few months.”
Despite the risk to coastal regions, demographer Joseph Chamie indicates there’s no end in sight to further population growth. In 2003, he told the conference, about 53% of the United States or about 153 million people lived in 673 coastal counties. He further noted coastal populations have grown about 150% since 1960.
By 2008, Chamie predicts, the total coastal population is expected to increase by approximately 7 million people. “In addition to permanent residents, there is a large swell of vacationers holiday and weekend coming in the winter months,” he says, adding one-quarter of the nation’s seasonal homes are found in the coastal areas of Florida.