Thursday, November 8, 2012

Hurricane Sandy and President Obama's win

It is always interesting to read about President Obama's election being affected by a very Geographical event - a physical phenomenon known as a hurricane. Hurricane Sandy hit New York last week and was the focus of news articles all over the world. And yet, when I raised this issue to my boyfriend, he told me something that was quite thought- provoking:

Why is the news focused on New York, America, rather than the other countries where Hurricane Sandy hit ? Hurricane Sandy hit Cuba and left USD 2 billion in damages. It hit Jamaica, Dominican Republic (2 deaths), Bahamas, Haiti, where they still have not recovered from the earthquake in 2010, New Jersey and moved on to the USA into New York.

Damages, in New York, were obviously less than in the lesser developed nations. The LEDCs did not have capacity to cope, yet alone prepare for such a flood. They probably did not expect any hurricane at all (Edit: Wikipedia says that it did issue a storm warning after Jamaica did - but I question it's ability to reach the rural population - did they have technology? ), whereas the USA probably had research centres predicting and tracking every move of the hurricane before it touched on the shores of America. A warning that there would be a 90% chance of a storm was issued and 5000 flights were cancelled on time before the Hurricane. This saved a lot of economic losses for the developed country.

Observe the figure below:

CountryFatalitiesMissingDamage (in USD)Sources
 United States1131$50 billion (estimated)[158][159][160]
 Haiti5421Unknown[161][162]
 Cuba110$2 billion (estimated)[158][163][164]
 Bahamas20$300 million (estimated)[158][165]
 Canada20Unknown[166][167]
 Dominican Republic20Unknown[158]
 Jamaica10$55.23 million (estimated)[158][168]
 Bermuda00Unknown

It's not surprising to me at all that United States had the most deaths and the most economic losses (50 billion). Why ? Because they have the largest land mass of all the other nations hit, and that inside United States, each state's losses were added up together. The other countries all incurred losses that were high - for their state.


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