Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

During the 2008 hurricane season, Texas has so far been hit by Hurricane Dolly and Tropical Storm Edouard. The Louisiana coastline, however, has been spared. That state even dodged massive flooding from Tropical Storm Fay when she took a turn to the northeast after making landfall in Florida for what — the fourth time? — rather than taking the expected westerly track towards New Orleans.

At press time, Hurricane Gustav was battering Haiti’s southwest peninsula with 100 mph winds and the National Hurricane Center was predicting a west-northwest path for Gustav, toward Gulf of Mexico.

As Louisiana moves into its fourth post-Katrina, post-Rita year, New Orleans may have reason to feel slightly queasy about yet another hurricane churning into the Gulf. The Associated Press has reported after a year-long study of New Orleans’ levees and the work being done by the Army Corps of Engineers, that any sense of security the city’s residents may feel about levee safety “may be dangerously naïve.” The levee system is still unable to protect against another storm like Katrina, the AP said, and that condition will likely remain for the foreseeable future.

“When and if the Army Corps of Engineers finishes $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work, the city will have limited protection — what are defined as 100-year levees,” according to the report authored by the AP‘s Cain Burdeau. “This does not mean they’d stand up to storms for a century. Under the 100-year standard, in fact, experts say that every house being rebuilt in New Orleans has a 26 percent chance of being flooded again over a 30-year mortgage; and every child born in New Orleans would have nearly a 60 percent chance of seeing a major flood in his or her life.”

The Corps’ initial target date to complete post-Katrina work was September 2010; that date is now mid-2011. But, “last September, an Army audit found 84 percent of work behind schedule because of engineering complexities, environmental provisos and real estate transactions. The report added that costs would likely soar,” the AP noted.

No one can know whether or not a new storm will hit New Orleans or anywhere else along the coast of Texas or Louisiana during this hurricane season. It’s also not known, if a storm does batter New Orleans, whether or not the levee system will hold. But one thing agents can do is to review their customers’ insurance needs — homeowners, commercial property, flood coverage, business interruption and more — now. That way, they, and their clients, can be certain they’re covered in case the worst does happen.

But let’s hope it doesn’t.