[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 10, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1166-E1167]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WELCOME TO HURRICANE SEASON

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BILL McCOLLUM

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 10, 1997

  Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to highlight the fact that 
hurricane season is upon us. The official start of hurricane season is 
June 1. With that comes an entire east coast and gulf coast that braces 
for the worst--a hurricane ravaging the landscape.
  Hurricanes are inevitable. They are unpredictable. They are 
destructive. And this year, 1997, looks to be a particularly bad year. 
In fact, the New York Times recently ran a story titled ``Storm 
Warning: Bigger Hurricanes and More of Them.'' That is not exactly good 
news. I am attaching the article for the record.
  The damage that these storms can cause is absolutely staggering. When 
measured in today's dollars and projected damage based on property 
value, the worst hurricane occurred in 1926, before storms were named. 
It hit southeast Florida and Alabama, and had it hit in the same spot 
today, it is estimated that it would have caused $72.3 billion in 
damages. That's right: $72.3 billion. And we thought Andrew in 1992 was 
bad, hitting only an estimated $33.1 billion in damages if the same 
hurricane swept through today.
  Mr. Speaker, this is virtually beyond comprehension. And it isn't 
just Florida. If New England were hit today by the same hurricane that 
did in 1938, damages could exceed $16 billion. If Camille--1969--hit 
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia today we'd be looking at almost 
$11 billion. If Hugo--1989--hit South Carolina today it would be almost 
$10 billion.
  So what are we to do? If all projections are correct, it appears that 
we may have a major storm along the lines of Andrew slamming into the 
east coast or gulf coast this summer or fall. On top of this 
frightening thought is the aftermath of such a tragic event. Andrew put 
a dozen insurance companies into insolvency and threw the entire 
disaster insurance market in Florida into turmoil. Reinsurance for 
hurricanes has virtually disappeared in Florida. Today, rates are 
skyrocketing if coverage is available at all. What would another hit 
like that do to Florida? What would such a disaster do to North 
Carolina? Or Louisiana? Or Texas?
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think that we necessarily have to find out just 
how bad things can get. There is a way to ensure that disaster 
insurance remains a viable option for homeowners. In fact, I have 
introduced legislation which would directly address this problem. H.R. 
230, the Natural Disaster Protection and Insurance Act, would provide a 
Federal backstop for truly disastrous events. Essentially, Treasury 
would auction reinsurance contracts to be bid upon by private insurers 
and State insurance pools. These contracts would be actuarily sound, 
protecting the Government against undue loss, while injecting 
reinsurance back into the disaster insurance market. The contracts 
would cover disasters that cause over $10 billion in insured losses up 
to $35 billion. Payment on the reinsurance would come from the proceeds 
from the auction.
  This legislation would be just what the doctor ordered if we are to 
ensure continued insurance availability in disaster prone areas. Not 
only does it cover hurricanes, but earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis 
as well. Perhaps it is appropriate to discuss this when the House is 
considering a supplemental bill to pay for other disasters, which we 
are currently doing. Imagine the burden on the Federal Government if 
people who cannot get adequate insurance come looking for assistance? 
Just another reason we need to act.
  Mr. Speaker, the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services, 
on which I serve, is scheduled to begin hearings on this and similar 
legislation in the near future. I urge my colleagues to support a 
solution to this current and future crisis affecting people in my State 
and across the country. H.R. 230 is a solid beginning and I look 
forward to its consideration.

                [From the New York Times, June 3, 1997]

           Storm Warning: Bigger Hurricanes and More of Them

                        (By William K. Stevens)

       The East and Gulf Coasts of the United States may be 
     entering a long-anticipated, prolonged siege of more frequent 
     and more destructive hurricanes, forecasters say.
       They predict that this summer, more hurricanes than normal 
     will develop in the tropical North Atlantic for the third 
     straight year. This would make 1995-97 the most active three-
     year period on record for the pinwheeling oceanic cyclones, 
     and the experts say that could be only the beginning.
       The 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's were a time of 
     relatively infrequent hurricanes. Those years did have their 
     big storms: 7 of the 10 most costly hurricanes ever to strike 
     the United States mainland did so over that stretch, 
     including Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the costliest ever. But a 
     new Federal study attributes the trend of escalating damage 
     over that period to expanding population and exploding 
     development rather than more frequent or powerful storms.
       Now the atmosphere and ocean appear to have entered a new 
     and more ominous hurricane phase. Some experts believe the 
     turbulent stretch beginning two years ago signifies a return 
     to the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's, a period of high hurricane 
     activity in the United States. If that is so, according to 
     the new Federal study, the cost of damage wrought by 
     hurricanes--already the most expensive natural disasters in 
     America--could soar to new heights.
       Scientists offer varying explanations of what is 
     responsible for the increase in hurricane frequency. One new 
     study has found that sea-surface temperatures in 1995 were 
     the highest on record in the tropical North Atlantic. That 
     year, 19 tropical storms and hurricanes, double the 1946-1995 
     average, formed in the Atlantic. The authors of the study 
     concluded that warmer seas encouraged incipient hurricanes to 
     develop by infusing them with more energy. Temperatures in 
     the region of hurricane births, between 10 degrees and 20 
     degrees north latitude, have remained above average since 
     1995.
       Coincidentally or not, 1995 also saw the highest average 
     global surface temperatures on record, and some scientists 
     say this raises the possibility that global warming is 
     contributing to the increased frequency of hurricanes. The 
     coincidence ``is suggestive of some link to global warming, 
     but that needs to be proved,'' said Dr. Mark A. Saunders, 
     chief author of the study. It is ``just one of the 
     possibilities,'' he said.
       Others say that global warming is almost certainly not the 
     cause. One is Dr. William M. Gray, an atmospheric scientist 
     and hurricane expert at Colorado State University in Fort 
     Collins. The rise in sea temperature ``is not related to the 
     warming of the planet,'' he said, noting that global warming 
     has been slow, while the Atlantic sea-surface temperature 
     jumped in a matter of months.
       It was Dr. Gray and his group of researchers who correctly 
     predicted that 1995 would be one of the most active seasons 
     on record, although they underestimated 1996. In April, the 
     group forecast that 1997 would also bring more hurricanes 
     than average, including the more intense ones. These major 
     storms are defined as those with peak sustained winds of more 
     than 100 miles an hour, and they account for 75 percent of 
     all hurricane damage. Lesser hurricanes have peak winds of at 
     least 74 miles an hour.
       The forecasters predicted that the 1997 hurricane season, 
     which officially began on Sunday and lasts through November, 
     would product 7 hurricanes, 3 of which would be in the 
     intense category, and 4 lesser tropical storms strong enough 
     to be named. By comparison, 11 of the 19 named storms in 1995 
     were hurricanes, 5 of them severe; last year, 9 of the 13 
     named storms were hurricanes and 6 were severe.
       The Colorado group's forecast applies to an area 
     encompassing the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the 
     Gulf of Mexico. It is to be updated on Friday, but Dr. Gray 
     said the update was not expected to depart substantially from 
     the April prediction. The forecasters do not attempt to 
     predict whether or where any of the hurricanes will strike 
     land.
       The forecasts are based on an array of predictive signs and 
     atmospheric phenomena that Dr. Gray has identified as 
     determining hurricane activity. One is the amount of rainfall 
     in the Sahel region of western Africa, where the small areas 
     of low pressure

[[Page E1167]]

     that are the embryos of hurricanes first form. When the Sahel 
     is wetter, Dr. Gray found, more embryos form. This year, the 
     Sahel is wet.
       Another factor is the phenomenon known as El Nino, the huge 
     pool of warm water that develops every two to seven years in 
     the eastern tropical Pacific, changing weather patterns 
     around the world. When it is in place, high-level winds 
     blowing from the west tend to shear off the tops of 
     developing hurricanes in the adjacent Atlantic, causing them 
     to abort. El Nino may make an appearance later this year, 
     forecasters say, but the Colorado group predicts that it will 
     not do so in time to affect the hurricane picture.
       Other elements include the behavior of stratospheric winds 
     that circle the globe high above the equator and weather 
     features far remote from the Atlantic hurricane belt--things, 
     for example, like the temperature high above Singapore. On 
     balance, the forecasters say, the indicators point to higher-
     than-average activity this year.
       One of the most powerful indicators, according to the new 
     study by Dr. Saunders and Andrew R. Harris, climate 
     scientists at University College London in Britain, is the 
     Atlantic sea-surface temperature. Their statistical analysis 
     found that while most of the relevant factors were indeed 
     favorable for hurricane development in the banner year of 
     1995, the dominating influence was the unusually warm ocean. 
     The temperature in the region where hurricanes develop was 
     1.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1946-1995 average, a 
     record. The development region was 0.36 of a degree warmer 
     than average last year and is about 0.9 of a degree warmer 
     now. This, said Dr. Saunders, presages another active 
     season. his study appeared in the May 15 issue of the 
     journal Geophysical Research Letters.
       The researchers suggest that warmer seas cause more water 
     to evaporate from the surface. With evaporation, latent heat 
     is released in the atmosphere, and the researchers believe 
     that this is what imparts more energy to the embryonic storms 
     coming out of Africa, making it more likely that they will 
     develop into hurricanes. ``It seems that this is a stronger 
     effect that any other mechanism, like El Nino or the monsoon 
     in the western Sahel,'' Dr. Saunders said.
       The question, he said, is whether the rising sea 
     temperature is a natural expression of the climate system's 
     variability, independent of any influence from a warming 
     atmosphere. Dr. Gray, for his part, says he believes the 
     warmer ocean temperature is ``a manifestation of a major 
     change in North Atlantic ocean circulation.'' Stately 
     currents in the North Atlantic undergo periodic shifts on 
     decadal time scales. Dr. Gray said he believed that a new 
     pattern was in place, and that it was likely to presage a 
     decade or two of above-average hurricane activity.
       ``This is the greatest fear we have,'' he said, ``that 
     we're entering a new era. I believe we are.''
       If so, the new Federal study on hurricane damage may offer 
     a preview of what lies ahead. In the study, Dr. Roger Pielke 
     Jr. of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in 
     Boulder, Colo., and Dr. Christopher Landsea of the National 
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research 
     division in Miami calculated how much damage would result 
     from past hurricanes if they had occurred in 1995, when the 
     coasts held many more people and much more wealth than 
     earlier.
       The calculation, which also accounts for inflation, shows 
     that if the more numerous storms of the very active quarter-
     century prior to 1970 were to hit the mainland now, each of 
     the storms would cause far more damage than it did back then.
       It has been suggested in the past that escalating hurricane 
     damage in more recent decades has resulted from an increase 
     in the number and severity of storms. The Pielke-Landsea 
     analysis found this is not so. In fact, when all hurricane 
     damage was assessed as if it had occurred in 1995, the four 
     biggest hurricanes of the last eight years were no longer the 
     most damaging in history. Andrew, which exacted an all-time 
     record $26.5 billion in actual damages, was downgraded to 
     second place by a monster that struck Florida and Alabama in 
     1926. Hugo (1989), Opal (1995) and Fran (1996) slip far down 
     the list.
       The analysis, its authors wrote, indicates clearly ``that 
     the United States has been fortunate in recent decades with 
     regard to storm losses.'' Now, they wrote, multibillion-
     dollar losses may become increasingly frequent, and it may be 
     ``only a matter of time'' before a single storm exacts $50 
     billion in damages.

     

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