Hurricane Ida would have caused much more damage and many more deaths if federal taxpayers had not spent $14 billion rebuilding and strengthening New Orleans-area levees after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to analysts.
Hurricane Ida, which cut a path of destruction from Louisiana to New York last year, is being recognized as one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history and the world’s costliest natural disaster in 2021.
“The investments were absolutely worth it,” Munich Re chief climate scientist Ernst Rauch said in an interview from Germany. “Having sound and resilient infrastructure is key to recovering fast from these events and also preventing major losses.” The global cost of disaster damage in 2021 was short of the $340 billion record set in 2017 but could have been much higher if the New Orleans levees and flood walls had not been rebuilt to withstand a storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring annually.
Senators and Army Corps of Engineers leaders made a similar point about the Greater New Orleans Hurricane & Storm Damage Risk Reduction System during a congressional hearing in October. Munich Re’s $65 billion cost estimate for Ida matches the estimate by NOAA, which ranks Ida as the fifth costliest weather or climate disaster since the agency began tracking costs in 1980.
The experience with Ida contrasts sharply to the second-costliest natural disaster of 2021—flash flooding in Western Europe in July that caused $54 billion in damage and 228 deaths, according to Munich Re.
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