Comment by Retric
1 day ago
Hurricanes are common. The general case is they hit hundreds or thousands of square miles and destroy none or at worst a tiny fraction of the homes they hit.
Take Katrina from my friends and family living in New Orleans, you’ll find city streets where none of the houses go significantly damaged. They lost power long enough you don’t want to open the fridge, but most of the city was fine in the hardest hit city from one of the most expensive storms on record.
Over 200,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in Katrina:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans
Not sure how that is a "tiny fraction" of homes. $125 billion in damage (2005).
Moving the goalposts from destroyed to damaged gives different results.
The issue is most to the city only sustained water damage, a solid chunk of the city is above the water level and was absolutely fine. Moving outside the city most homes in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama etc don’t need to worry about flooding.