Newswise — A government disaster consultant and professor from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Ala. believes Hurricane Rita will hit hard, but because Texas is located above sea level, the severity of the storm won't be as devastating as Katrina.
Dr. Vincent Gawronski, an assistant professor of political science, says that Hurricane Rita will cause significant damage along the Texas coast, but because it's above sea level, it is much less vulnerable than New Orleans and other regions damaged heavily by Katrina.
"There will be a lot of wind damage, and a storm surge of 15-20 feet above normal tide levels will cause a great deal of structural damage. Heavy rainfall will definitely compound the flooding problem," he says.
Gawronski has been a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) since 1998, and is conducting research on the media coverage on the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is teaming up on the research with Richard Olson of Florida International University using funds provided by a standing relationship with the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Research Center to study natural disasters.
Not only is Gawronski researching the media coverage following this last disaster, he also has been looking at the historical significance of two storms of this magnitude taking place less than a month apart over such a small area. He says he could find no record of back-to-back Category 4 or 5 hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast.
According to Gawronski, the National Hurricane Center is predicting rainfall totals in excess of 25 inches with Rita. "If this hurricane slows down or stalls like Hurricane Mitch did in 1998, we could be looking at a deluge of Biblical proportions," he says.
The average elevation of Galveston, Texas—where the storm is expected to hit land¬—is 10 feet, and Gawronski says "it looks like the entire island will be submerged with Rita's storm surge." The hurricane that destroyed this area in 1900 claimed the lives of at least 8,000 people, he says.
The fact that Hurricane Rita is coming so soon after the Hurricane Katrina response debacle is helping with the evacuation of Texas coastal areas. "I also believe that local, state, and federal emergency managers are more keenly aware of the risks and vulnerabilities. The Bush administration and FEMA/DHC certainly can't have another screw up," Gawronski says. "Moreover, the media and public spotlights are focused rather sharply on this one. We are all still very sensitized to the power of Mother Nature and human vulnerabilities coming off of Katrina.
"Of course, this impending disaster will cause gas prices to rise again, and there will another negative economic impact. Down the road, however, there will be a real estate and construction boom."
Super computer models using data from all over the globe have been making the forecast more accurate, although Gawronski admits that he's not a meteorologist. "Nonetheless," he says, "I have noticed that their forecasts and predictions are getting more and more accurate. I've seen the probability cone of hurricane tracking become more and more narrow over the past decade."
Last month Gawronski was one of the opening speakers at a large conference on disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response in Central America. The conference was being hosted by the University of South Florida's Global Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance and U.S. Southern Command. His talk was titled "The Politics of Disasters."
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