Disaster

Authored by Dale Steinreich viaThe Mises Institute,

As the floodwaters brought by Hurricane Harvey last week recede and new hurricane Irma moves slowly toward the Eastern U.S., it might be edifying to review how millions of Americans, despite federal anti-flood efforts, came to live and work in hazardous to dangerous flood-prone areas.

If you count yourself among the unlucky residents of Southern Florida where Hurricane Irma looks likely to make her continental U.S. landfall, you may want to take notice of a new study just published by Kelly Edmiston of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City which details the devastating toll that hurricanes can take on your hard-earned credit score. 

This morning we reported that the small Caribbean island of St. Martin has been one of the first casualties of the "monstrous" Hurricane Irma, after the French government said that the four "most solid" buildings on the Caribbean island were destroyed by Irma.

Irma is the kind of storm where you get thousands of lives lost. This is not going to be the big slow-motion flood like Harvey - this is a real, honest-to-God hurricane.

       - Chuck Watson, disaster modeler with Enki Research