Ten summers have passed since Hurricane Katrina struck the shores of the Gulf Coast the final week of August 2005. As we mark the ten-year anniversary, it is a good time to highlight significant advancements in storm readiness and response borne out of the Great Storm’s lessons.
An explosion of technological and communications innovation has defined our times in the wake of Katrina that today deliver on America’s promise to protect lives and property.
Today, forecasters possess a greater ability to track and predict where a hurricane will hit. Real-time data from new and upgraded satellites, equipped with faster and higher-resolution instruments, and night-imaging capability, have made the three-day hurricane forecast as accurate as the two-day forecast was one decade ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). Next year, satellite imaging gets even better with the launch of NOAA’s next generation GOES-R satellite. During a storm, the satellite will capture one image every 30 seconds, providing yet greater tracking capability.
Such increased focus at the federal level is already paying dividends in the states. Last summer, when Hurricane Arthur bore down on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, what ten years ago would have been a hurricane warning from Georgia to Virginia, was instead confined to the Tar Heel state’s coastline. Mandatory evacuations, often the costliest part of a storm in lives and property, were limited to Hatteras Island. There was no loss of life. Many July Fourth activities went on as planned, allowing for limited commercial interruption.
The next time an epic storm threatens, hurricane-hunting planes most likely won’t be the only aircraft on data-seeking missions. GPS and sensor-equipped drones, currently in development, are designed to fly right into the poorly-understood belly of a storm for more accurate predictions about a storm’s path. What’s more, property and casualty insurance experts predict the day is near when UAVs will evaluate damage after a storm, expediting assistance for distressed policy holders.
Post-storm communications today are light years ahead of 2005. Insurers have wisely leveraged social media. Text message alerts to smart phone-toting policy holders are now proven lines of transmission for claims filing. Social media sites like Facebook (in its infancy in 2005) and Twitter (not yet launched), now leveraged to live-stream news conferences, link to shelter locations, and post storm surge and road closure maps. In 2012, before and after Hurricane Sandy, preparedness tips, YouTube videos and blog posts delivered real-time impact information and resource updates to impacted constituents.
Our storm readiness work is not yet done. Hurricane intensity forecasts have only improved ten percent since Katrina. To better understand exactly why some storms turn into monsters while others fizzle out, NASA and a long list of research partners are collaborating on a five-year project dubbed Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3. The project leverages a suite of instruments aboard two drones to uncover fresh insights about the vexing mechanisms that lead to hurricane re-intensification.
Despite that challenge, the progress realized in storm readiness over the past decade calls to mind the words of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “The history of free men is never really written by chance, but by choice- their choice.”
Forces of nature created Katrina by chance. It was America’s choice to answer the call for progress. Lessons-learned and practices adopted from this epic storm will benefit the descendants of today’s consumers and policy holders for generations to come.
David A. Sampson is president and CEO of Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. Prior to joining PCI, he served as the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Department’s chief operating officer overseeing its 15 agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
